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LIBRARY 

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WOOD   AND   STONE 


Books  by 
JOHN    COWPER    POWYS 

The  War  and  Culture,    1914      .     $  .60 
Visions  and  Revisions,    1915     .     $2.00 

published  by  G.  ARNOLD  SHAW 
GRAND  CENTRAL  TERMINAL,  NEW  YORK 


WOOD  AND  STONE 


A  ROMANCE 


BY 

JOHN   COWPER  POWYS 

/// 


Licuit,  semperque  licebit 
Parcere  personis,  dicere  de  vitiis. 


1915 
G.  ARNOLD  SHAW 

NEW  YORK 


COPYRIGHT,  1915 
BY  G.  ARNOLD  SHAW 


COPYRIGHT  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN 
AND  COLONIES 


DEDICATED 

WITH   DEVOTED   ADMIRATION 

TO   THE   GREATEST   POET   AND   NOVELIST 

OF   OUR   AGE 

THOMAS    HARDY 


PREFACE 

THE  following  narrative  gathers  itself  round 
what  is,  perhaps,  one  of  the  most  absorbing 
and  difficult  problems  of  our  age;  the  problem 
namely  of  getting  to  the  bottom  of  that  world-old 
struggle  between  the  "well-constituted"  and  the  "ill- 
constituted,"  which  the  writings  of  Nietzsche  have 
recently  called  so  startlingly  to  our  attention. 

Is  there  such  a  thing  at  all  as  Nietzsche's  born  and 
trained  aristocracy?  In  other  words,  is  the  secret 
of  the  universe  to  be  reached  only  along  the  lines  of 
Power,  Courage,  and  Pride?  Or,  —  on  the  contrary, 
—  is  the  hidden  and  basic  law  of  things,  not  Power 
but  Sacrifice,  not  Pride  but  Love? 

Granting,  for  the  moment,  that  this  latter  alterna- 
tive is  the  true  one,  what  becomes  of  the  drastic 
distinction  between  "well-constituted"  and  "ill-con- 
stituted"? 

In  a  universe  whose  secret  is  not  self-assertion,  but 
self-abandonment,  might  not  the  "well-constituted" 
be  regarded  as  the  vanquished,  and  the  "ill-consti- 
tuted" as  the  victors?  In  other  words,  who,  in  such 
a  universe,  are  the  "well-constituted"? 

But  the  difficulty  does  not  end  here.  Supposing  we 
rule  out  of  our  calculation  both  of  these  antipodal 
possibilities,  —  both  the  universe  whose  inner  fatality 
is  the  striving  towards  Power,  and  the  universe  whose 
inner   fatality    is    the    striving    towards    Love,  —  will 


vlli  PREFACE 


there  not  be  found  to  remain  two  other  rational 
hypotheses,  either,  namely,  that  there  is  no  inner 
fatality  about  it  at  all,  that  the  whole  thing  is  a 
blind,  fantastic,  chance-drifting  chaos;  or  that  the 
true  secret  lies  in  some  subtle  and  difficult  reconcil- 
iation, between  the  will  to  Power  and  the  will  to 
Love? 

The  present  chronicle  is  an  attempt  to  give  an 
answer,  inevitably  a  very  tentative  one,  to  this 
formidable  question;  the  writer,  feeling  that,  as  in 
all  these  matters,  where  the  elusiveness  of  human 
nature  plays  so  prominent  a  part,  there  is  more  hope 
of  approaching  the  truth,  indirectly,  and  by  means  of 
the  imaginative  mirror  of  art,  than  directly,  and  by 
means  of  rational  theorizing. 

The  whole  question  is  indeed  so  intimately  asso- 
ciated with  the  actual  panorama  of  life  and  the 
evasive  caprices  of  flesh  and  blood,  that  every  kind 
of  drastic  and  clinching  formula  breaks  down  under 
its  pressure. 

Art,  alone,  —  that  mysterious  daughter  of  Life,  — 
has  the  secret  of  following  the  incalculable  move- 
ments of  the  Force  to  which  she  is  so  near  akin.  A 
story  which  grossly  points  its  moral  with  fixed  in- 
dicative finger  is  a  story  which,  in  the  very  strain  of 
that  premature  articulation,  has  lost  the  magic  of 
its  probability.  The  secret  of  our  days  flies  from 
our  attempts  at  making  it  fit  such  clumsy  categories, 
and  the  maddening  flavour  of  the  cosmic  cup  refuses 
to  be  imprisoned  in  any  laboratory. 

At  this  particular  moment  in  the  history  of  our 
planet  it  is  above  all  important  to  protest  against 
this   prostituting   of   art   to   pseudo-science.      It   must 


PREFACE  ix 


not  be  allowed  to  these  hasty  philosophical  conclu- 
sions and  spasmodic  ethical  systems,  to  block  up  and 
close  in,  as  they  are  so  ready  to  do,  the  large  free 
horizons  of  humour  and  poetry.  The  magic  of  the 
world,  mocking  both  our  gravity  and  our  flippancy, 
withdraws  itself  from  our  shrewd  rationalizations,  only 
to  take  refuge  all  the  deeper  in  our  intrinsic  and 
evasive  hearts. 

In  this  story  the  author  has  been  led  to  inter- 
est himself  in  the  curious  labyrinthine  subtleties 
which  mark  the  difference,  —  a  difference  to  be  ob- 
served in  actual  life,  quite  apart  from  moral  values,  — 
between  the  type  of  person  who  might  be  regarded 
as  born  to  rule,  and  the  type  of  person  who  might 
be  regarded  as  born  to  be  ruled  over.  The  grand 
Nietzschean  distinction  is,  in  a  sense,  rejected  here 
upon  its  own  ground,  a  ground  often  inconsequently 
deserted  by  those  who  make  it  their  business  to  con- 
demn it.  Such  persons  are  apt  to  forget  that  the 
whole  assumption  of  this  distinction  lies  in  a  substi- 
tution of  (Esthetic  values,  for  the  values  more  com- 
monly applied. 

The  pivotal  point  of  the  ensuing  narrative  might 
be  described  as  an  attempt  to  suggest,  granting  such 
an  aesthetic  test,  that  the  hearts  of  "ill-constituted" 
persons,  —  the  hearts  of  slaves.  Pariahs,  cowards, 
outcasts,  and  other  victims  of  fate,  —  may  be  at 
least  as  interesting,  in  their  bizarre  convolutions,  as 
the  hearts  of  the  bravest  and  gayest  among  us.  And 
interest,  after  all,  is  the  supreme  exigency  of  the 
aesthetic  sense! 

In  order  to  thrust  back  from  its  free  horizons  these 
invasions    of    its    prerogatives    by    alien    powers.    Art 


PREFACE 


must  prove  itself  able  to  evoke  the  very  tang  and 
salt  and  bitter-sweetness  of  the  actual  pell-mell  of 
life  —  its  unfolding  spaces,  its  shell-strewn  depths. 
She  must  defend  herself  from  those  insidious  traitors 
in  her  own  camp  who  would  betray  her  into  the  hands 
of  the  system-makers,  by  proving  that  she  can  ap- 
proach nearer  to  the  magic  of  the  world,  without  a 
system,  than  all  these  are  able  to  do,  with  all  of 
theirs!  She  must  keep  the  horizons  open  —  that  must 
be  her  main  concern.  She  must  hold  fast  to  poetry 
and  humour,  and  about  her  creations  there  must  be 
a  certain  spirit  of  liberation,  and  the  presence  of 
large  tolerant  after-thoughts. 

The  curious  thing  about  so  many  modern  writers 
is,  that  in  their  earnest  preoccupation  with  philo- 
sophical and  social  problems,  they  grow  strained  and 
thin  and  sententious,  losing  the  mass  and  volume,  as 
well  as  the  elusive-blown  airs,  of  the  flowing  tide. 
On  the  other  hand  there  is  an  irritating  tendency, 
among  some  of  the  cleverest,  to  recover  their  lost 
balance  after  these  dogmatic  speculations,  by  foolish 
indulgence  in  sheer  burlesque  —  burlesque  which  is 
the  antithesis  of  all  true  humour. 

Heaven  help  us!  It  is  easy  enough  to  criticize 
the  lath  and  plaster  w^hich,  in  so  many  books,  takes 
the  place  of  flesh  and  blood.  It  is  less  easy  to  catch, 
for  oneself,  the  breath  of  the  ineffable  spirit! 

Perhaps  the  deplorable  thinness  and  sententiousness, 
to  which  reference  has  been  made,  may  be  due  to 
the  fact  that  in  the  excitement  of  modern  contro- 
versy, our  enterprising  writers  have  no  time  to  read. 
It  is  a  strange  thing,  but  one  really  feels  as  though, 
among  all  modern  English  authors,  the  only  one  who 


PREFACE  xi 


brings  with  him  an  atmosphere  of  the  large  mellow 
leisurely  humanists  of  the  past,  —  of  the  true  classics, 
in  fact,  —  is  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy. 

It  is  for  this  reason,  for  the  reason  that  with  this 
great  genius,  life  is  approached  in  the  old  ample 
ironic  way,  that  the  narrator  of  the  following  tale 
has  taken  the  liberty  of  putting  Mr.  Hardy's  name 
upon  his  title-page.  In  any  case  mere  courtesy  and 
decency  called  for  such  a  recognition.  One  could 
hardly  have  the  audacity  to  plant  one's  poor  standard 
in  the  heart  of  Wessex  without  obeisance  being  paid 
to  the  literary  over-lord  of  that  suggestive  region. 

It  must  be  understood,  however,  that  the  temerity 
of  the  author  does  not  carry  him  so  far  as  to  regard 
his  eccentric  story  as  in  any  sense  an  attempted 
imitation  of  the  Wessex  novelist.  Mr.  Hardy  cannot 
be  imitated.  The  mention  of  his  admirable  name  at 
the  beginning  of  this  book  is  no  more  than  a  humble 
salutation  addressed  to  the  monarch  of  that  par- 
ticular country,  by  a  wayward  nomad,  lighting  a 
bivouac-fire,  for  a  brief  moment,  in  the  heart  of  a 
land  that  is  not  his. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.     Leo's  Hill 1 

II.     Nevilton 9 

III.  Olympian  Conspiracy 21 

IV.  Reprisals  from  Below 33 

V.     Francis  Taxater 53 

VI.     The  Pariahs 80 

VII.     Idyllic  Pleasures 109 

VIII.  The  Mythology  of  Sacrifice   .    .    .    134 

IX.  The  Mythology  of  Power    ....    156 

X.     The  Orchard 184 

XI.     Art  and  Nature 212 

XII.     AuBER  Lake 247 

XIII.  Lacrima 276 

XIV.  Under-Currents 317 

XV.     Mortimer  Romer 355 

XVI.      HULLAWAY 386 

XVII.     Sagittarius 430 

XVIII.     Voices  by  the  Way 460 

XIX.     Planetary  Intervention 489 

XX.     Vox  PopuLi 519 

XXI.     Cesar's  Quarry 536 

XXII.     A  Royal  Watering-Place 572 

XXIII.     Ave  atque  Vale! 595 


xiv  CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

XXIV.     The  Granary 621 

XXV.     Metamorphosis 650 

XXVI.     Various  Encounters 667 

XXVII.     Vennie  Seldom 679 

XXVIII.     LoDMOOR 696 

XXIX.     The  Goat  and  Boy 714 


WOOD   AND   STONE 


CHAPTER   I 
LEO'S  HILL 

MIDWAY  between  Glastonbury  and  Brid- 
port,  at  the  point  where  the  eastern  plains 
of  Somersetshire  merge  into  the  western 
valleys  of  Dorsetshire,  stands  a  prominent  and 
noticeable  hill;  a  hill  resembling  the  figure  of  a 
crouching  lion. 

East  of  the  hill,  nestling  at  the  base  of  a  cone- 
shaped  eminence  overgrown  with  trees  and  topped 
by  a  thin  Thyrsus-like  tower,  lies  the  village  of 
Nevilton. 

Were  it  not  for  the  neighbourhood  of  the  more 
massive  promontory  this  conical  protuberance  would 
itself  have  stood  out  as  an  emphatic  landmark; 
but  Leo's  Hill  detracts  from  its  emphasis,  as  it 
detracts  from  the  emphasis  of  all  other  deviations 
from  the  sea-level,  between  Yeoborough  and  the 
foot  of  the  Quantocks. 

It  was  on  the  apex  of  Nevilton  Mount  that  the 
Holy  Rood  of  Waltham  was  first  found;  but  with 
whatever  spiritual  influence  this  event  may  have  en- 
dowed the  gentler  summit,  it  is  not  to  it,  but  to 
Leo's  Hill,  that  the  lives  and  destinies  of  the  people 
of    Nevilton    have    come    to    gravitate.      One    might 


WOOD    AND    STONE 


indeed  without  difficulty  conceive  of  a  strange 
supernatural  conflict  going  on  between  the  conse- 
crated repository  of  Christian  tradition  guarding  its 
little  flock,  and  the  impious  heathen  fortress  to  which 
day  by  day  that  flock  is  driven,  to  seek  their  material 
sustenance. 

Even  in  Pre-Celtic  times  those  formidably  dug 
trenches  and  frowning  slopes  must  have  looked  down 
on  the  surrounding  valley;  and  to  this  day  it  is  the 
same  suggestion  of  tyrannical  military  dominance, 
which,  in  spite  of  quarries  and  cranes  and  fragrant 
yellow  gorse,  gives  the  place  its  prevailing  character. 

The  rounded  escarpments  have  for  centuries  been 
covered  with  pleasant  turf  and  browsed  upon  by 
sheep;  but  patient  antiquarian  research  constantly 
brings  to  light  its  coins,  torques,  urns,  arrow-heads, 
amulets;  and  rumour  hints  that  yet  more  precious 
things  lie  concealed  under  those  grassy  mounds. 

The  aboriginal  tribes  have  been  succeeded  by  the 
Celt;  the  Celt  by  the  Roman;  the  Roman  by  the 
Saxon;  without  any  change  in  the  place's  inherent 
character,  and  without  any  lessening  of  its  tyranny 
over  the  surrounding  country.  For  though  Leo's 
Hill  dominates  no  longer  by  means  of  its  external 
strength,  it  dominates,  quite  as  completely,  by  means 
of  its  interior  riches. 

It  is,  in  fact,  a  huge  rock-island,  washed  by  the 
leafy  waves  of  the  encircling  valleys,  and  contain- 
ing, as  its  hid  treasure,  stone  enough  to  rebuild 
Babylon. 

In  that  particular  corner  of  the  West  Country,  so 
distinct  and  deep-rooted  are  the  legendary  surviv- 
als,   it    is    hard    not    to    feel    as    though    some    vast 


LEO'S  HILL 


spiritual  conflict  were  still  proceeding  between  the 
two  opposed  Mythologies  —  the  one  drawing  its 
strength  from  the  impulse  to  Power,  and  the  other 
from  the  impulse  to  Sacrifice. 

A  village-dweller  in  Nevilton  might,  if  he  were 
philosophically  disposed,  be  just  as  much  a  percipient 
of  this  cosmic  struggle,  as  if  he  stood  between  the 
Palatine  and  St.  Peter's, 

Let  him  linger  among  the  cranes  and  pulleys  of 
this  heathen  promontory,  and  look  westward  to  the 
shrine  of  the  Holy  Grail,  or  eastward  to  where 
rested  the  Holy  Rood,  and  it  would  be  strange  if  he 
did  not  become  conscious  of  the  presence  of  eternal 
spiritual  antagonists,  wrestling  for  the  mastery. 

He  would  at  any  rate  be  made  aware  of  the  fatal 
force  of  Inanimate  Objects  over  human  destiny. 

There  would  seem  to  him  something  positively 
monstrous  and  sinister  about  the  manner  in  which 
this  brute  mass  of  inert  sandstone  had  possessed 
itself  of  the  lives  of  the  generations.  It  had  come 
to  this  at  last;  that  those  who  owned  the  Hill 
owned  the  dwellers  beneath  the  Hill;  and  the  Hill 
itself  owned  them  that  owned  it. 

The  name  by  which  the  thing  had  come  to  be 
known  indicated  sufficiently  well  its  nature. 

Like  a  couchant  desert-lion  it  overlooked  its  prey; 
and  would  continue  to  do  so,  as  long  as  the  planet 
lasted. 

Out  of  its  inexhaustible  bowels  the  tawny  monster 
fed  the  cities  of  seven  countries  —  cities  whose  halls, 
churches,  theatres,  and  markets,  mocked  the  caprices 
of  rain  and  sun  as  obdurately  as  their  earth-bound 
parent  herself. 


WOOD   AND  STONE 


The  sandstone  of  Leo's  Hill  remains,  so  architects 
tell  us,  the  only  rival  of  granite,  as  a  means  for  the 
perpetuation  of  human  monuments.  Even  granite 
wears  less  well  than  this,  in  respect  to  the  assaults  of 
rain  and  flood.  The  solitary  mysterious  monoliths 
of  Stonehenge,  with  their  unknown,  alien  origin,  alone 
seem  to  surpass  it  in  their  eternal  perdurance. 

As  far  as  Xevilton  itself  is  concerned  everything  in 
the  place  owes  its  persuasive  texture  to  this  resistant 
yet  soft  material.  From  the  lordly  Elizabethan  man- 
sion to  the  humblest  pig-stye,  they  all  proceed  from 
the  entrails  of  Leo's  Hill;  and  they  all  still  wear  — 
these  motley  whelps  of  the  great  dumb  beast  —  its 
tawny  skin,  its  malleable  sturdiness,  its  enduring 
consistence. 

Who  can  resist  a  momentary  wonder  at  the  strange 
mutability  of  the  fate  that  governs  these  things? 
The  actual  slabs,  for  example,  out  of  which  the  high 
shafts  and  slender  pinnacles  of  the  church-tower  were 
originally  hewn,  must  once  have  lain  in  littered  heaps 
for  children  to  scramble  upon,  and  dogs  to  rub 
against.  And  now  they  are  the  windy  resting-places, 
and  airy  "coigns  of  vantage,"  of  all  the  feathered 
tribes  in  their  migrations! 

What  especially  separates  the  Stone  of  Leo's  Hill 
from  its  various  local  rivals,  is  its  chameleon-like 
power  of  taking  tone  and  colour  from  every  ele- 
ment it  touches.  While  Purbeck  marble,  for  instance, 
must  always  remain  the  same  dark,  opaque,  slippery 
thing  it  was  when  it  left  its  Dorset  coast;  while 
Portland  stone  can  do  nothing  but  grow  gloomier 
and  gloomier,  in  its  ashen-grey  moroseness,  under  the 
weight   of   the   London   fogs;     the   tawny   progeny   of 


LEO'S  HILL 


this  tyrant  of  the  western  vales  becomes  amber- 
streaked  when  it  restricts  the  play  of  fountains, 
orange-tinted  when  it  protects  herbacious  borders, 
and  rich  as  a  petrified  sunset  when  it  drinks  the 
evening  light  from  the  mellow  front  of  a  Cathedral 
Tower. 

Apart  from  any  geological  aflinity,  it  might  almost 
seem  as  though  this  Leonian  stone  possessed  some 
weird  occult  relation  to  those  deep  alluvial  deposits 
which  render  the  lanes  and  fields  about  Nevilton  so 
thick  with  heavy  earth. 

Though  closer  in  its  texture  to  sand  than  to  clay, 
it  is  with  clay  that  its  local  usage  is  more  generally 
associated,  and  it  is  into  a  clay-bed  that  it  crumbles 
at  last,  when  the  earth  retakes  her  own.  Its  prevail- 
ing colour  is  rather  the  colour  of  clay  than  of  sand, 
and  no  material  that  could  be  found  could  lend  itself 
more  congruously  to  the  clinging  consistence  of  a 
clay  floor. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  conceive  of  a  temple  of 
marble  or  Portland  stone  rising  out  of  the  embrace 
of  the  thick  Nevilton  soil.  But  Leonian  sandstone 
seems  no  more  than  a  concentrated  petrifaction  of 
such  soil  —  its  natural  evocation,  its  organic  expres- 
sion. The  soil  calls  out  upon  it  day  and  night  with 
friendly  recognition,  and  day  and  night  it  answers  the 
call.  There  is  thus  no  escape  for  the  human  victims 
of  these  two  accomplices.  In  confederate  reciprocity 
the  stone  receives  them  from  the  clay,  and  the  clay 
receives  them  from  the  stone.  They  pass  from  homes 
built  irretrievably  of  the  one,  into  smaller  and  more 
permanent  houses,  dug  irretrievably  out  of  the  other. 

The  character  of  the  soil  in  that  corner  of  Somerset- 


6 WOOD  AND   STONE 

shire  is  marked,  beyond  everything  else,  by  the  cling- 
ing tenacity  of  its  soft,  damp,  treacherous  earth. 
It  is  a  spot  loved  by  the  west-wind,  and  by  the  rains 
brought  by  the  west-wind.  Overshadowed  by  the 
lavish  fertility  of  its  abounding  foliage,  it  never  seems 
to  experience  enough  sunshine  to  draw  out  of  it  the 
eternal  presence  of  this  oppressive  dampness.  The 
lush  pastures  may  thicken,  the  rich  gardens  blossom, 
the  ancient  orchards  ripen;  but  an  enduring  sense  of 
something  depressing  and  deep  and  treacherous  lurks 
ever  in  the  background  of  these  pleasant  things. 
Not  a  field  but  has  its  overshadowing  trees;  and  not 
a  tree  but  has  its  roots  loosely  buried  in  that  special 
kind  of  soft,  heavy  earth,  which  an  hour's  rain  can 
change  into  clinging  mud. 

It  is  in  the  Nevilton  churchyard,  when  a  new 
grave  is  being  dug,  that  this  sinister  peculiarity  of 
the  earth-floor  is  especially  noticeable.  The  sight  of 
those  raw,  rough  heaps  of  yellow  clay,  tossed  out 
upon  grass  and  flowers,  is  enough  to  make  the  living 
shrink  back  in  terror  from  the  oblong  hole  into  which 
they  have  consigned  their  dead.  All  human  ceme- 
teries smell,  like  the  hands  of  the  Shakespearean  king, 
of  forlorn  mortality;  but  such  mortality  seems  more 
palpably,  more  oppressively  emphasized  among  the 
graves  of  Nevilton  than  in  other  repositories  of  the 
dead.  To  be  buried  in  many  a  burying-ground  one 
knows,  would  be  no  more  than  a  negative  terror;  no 
more  than  to  be  deprived,  as  Homer  puts  it,  of  the 
sweet  privilege  of  the  blessed  air.  But  to  be  buried 
in  Nevilton  clay  has  a  positive  element  in  its  dread- 
fulness.  It  is  not  so  much  to  be  buried,  as  to  be 
sucked  in,   drawn  down,   devoured,  absorbed.     Never 


LEO'S  HILL 


in  any  place  does  the  peculiar  eongruity  between  the 
yellowness  of  the  local  clay  and  the  yellowness  of  the 
local  stone  show  so  luridly  as  among  these  patient 
hillocks. 

The  tombstones  here  do  not  relieve  the  pressure  of 
fate  by  appealing,  in  marble  whiteness,  away  from 
the  anthropophagous  earth,  to  the  free  clouds  of 
heaven.  They  are  of  the  earth,  and  they  conspire 
with  the  earth.  They  yearn  to  the  soil,  and  the  soil 
yearns  to  them.  They  weigh  down  upon  the  poor 
relics  consigned  to  their  care,  in  a  hideous  partner- 
ship with  the  clay  that  is  working  its  will  upon  them. 

And  the  rank  vegetation  of  the  place  assists 
this  treachery.  Orange- tinted  lichen  and  rusty-red 
weather-stains  alternate  with  the  encroachments  of 
moss  and  weeds  in  reducing  each  separate  protruding 
slab  into  conformity  with  what  is  about  it  and  be- 
neath it.  This  churchyard,  whose  stone  and  clay 
so  cunningly  intermingle,  is  in  an  intimate  sense  the 
very  navel  and  centre  of  the  village.  Above  it  rises 
the  tall  perpendicular  tower  of  St.  Catharine's  church; 
and  beyond  it,  on  the  further  side  of  a  strip  of  pasture 
a  stagnant  pond,  and  a  solitary  sycamore,  stands  the 
farm  that  is  locally  named  "the  Priory."  This 
house,  the  most  imposing  of  all  in  the  village  except 
the  Manor,  has  as  its  immediate  background  the 
umbrageous  conical  eminence  where  the  Holy  Rood 
was  found.  It  is  a  place  adapted  to  modern  usage 
from  a  noble  fragment  of  monastic  ruin.  Here,  in 
mediaeval  days,  rose  a  rich  Cistercian  abbey,  to  which, 
doubtless,  the  pyramidal  mount,  in  the  background, 
offered  a  store  of  consecrated  legends. 

North  of  the  churchyard,  beyond  the  main  village 


WOOD   AND   STONE 


street  with  its  formal  town-like  compactness,  the 
ground  slopes  imperceptibly  up,  past  a  few  enclosed 
cottage-orchards,  to  where,  embosomed  in  gracious 
trees  and  Italianated  gardens,  stands  the  pride  and 
glory    of    Nevilton,    its    stately    Elizabethan     house. 

This  house,  founded  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII, 
synchronized  in  its  foundation  with  the  overthrow  of 
the  Cistercian  Order,  and  was  constructed  entirely 
of  Leonian  stone,  removed  for  the  purpose  of  building 
it  from  the  scene  of  the  Priory's  destruction.  Twice 
over,  then,  in  their  human  history,  since  they  left 
the  entrails  of  that  brooding  monster  over  which  the 
Nevilton  people  see  the  sun  set  each  day,  had  these 
carved  pieces  of  sandstone  contributed  to  the  pride 
of  the  rulers  of  men. 

Their  first  use  had  not  been  attended  with  an 
altogether  propitious  destiny.  How  far  their  present 
use  will  prove  of  happier  omen  remains  a  secret  of 
the  adamantine  Fates.  The  imaginary  weaving  of 
events,  upon  which  we  are  just  now  engaged,  may 
perhaps  serve,  as  certain  liturgical  formulae  of  pro- 
pitiation served  in  former  days,  as  a  means  of  averting 
the  wrath  of  the  Eumenides.  For  though  made  use 
of  again  and  again  for  fair  and  pious  purposes,  some- 
thing of  the  old  heathen  malignity  of  the  Druid  hill 
still  seems  to  hang  about  the  stone  it  yields;  and  over 
the  substance  of  that  stone's  destiny  the  two  Mythol- 
ogies still  struggle;  Power  and  Sacrifice  dividing  the 
living  and  the  dead. 


CHAPTER   II 
NEVILTON 

UNTIL  within  some  twenty  years  of  the  date 
with  which  we  are  now  concerned,  the  dis- 
tinguished family  who  originally  received  the 
monastic  estates  from  the  royal  despot  had  held 
them  intact  and  unassailed.  By  an  evil  chance  how- 
ever, the  property  had  extended  itself,  during  the 
eighteenth  century,  so  as  to  include  the  larger  portion 
of  Leo's  Hill;  and  since  that  day  its  possession  had 
been  attended  by  misfortune.  The  ancient  aboriginal 
fortress  proved  as  fatal  to  its  modern  invaders  as  it 
had  proved  in  remoter  times  to  Roman,  Saxon  and 
Norman. 

A  fanciful  imagination  might  indeed  have  amused 
itself  with  the  curious  dream,  that  some  weird  Druidic 
curse  had  been  laid  upon  that  grass-grown  island  of 
yellow  rock,  bringing  disaster  and  eclipse  to  all  who 
meddled  with  it.  Such  an  imagination  would  have 
been  able  to  fortify  its  fancy  by  recalling  the  sugges- 
tive fact  that  at  the  bottom  of  the  large  woodland 
pond,  indicated  in  this  narrative  under  the  name  of 
Auber  Lake,  was  discovered,  not  many  years  before, 
an  immense  slab  of  Leonian  stone,  inscribed  with 
symbols  baffling  interpretation,  but  suggesting,  to  one 
antiquarian  mind  at  least,  a  hint  of  pre-historic  Devil- 
Worship.  However  this  may  be,  it  is  certain  that 
the  family  of  Seldom   found  themselves   finally  faced 


10  WOOD  AND  STONE 

with  the  alternative  of  selling  the  place  they  loved  or 
of  seeing  it  lapse  under  their  hands  into  confusion 
and  neglect.  Of  these  evil  alternatives  they  chose  the 
former;  and  thus  the  estates,  properties,  royalties, 
and  appurtenances,  of  the  historic  Manor  of  Nevilton 
fell  into  the  hands  of  a  clever  financier  from  Lombard 
Street. 

The  family  of  Mr.  Mortimer  Romer  had  never  at 
any  time  bowed  its  knee  in  kings'  houses.  Nor  were 
its  religious  antecedents  marked  by  orthodox  reputa- 
tion. Mr.  Romer  was  indeed  in  every  sense  of  the 
word  a  "self-made  man."  But  though  neither  Chris- 
tian nor  Jew,  —  for  his  grandfather,  the  fish-monger 
of  Soho,  had  been  of  the  Unitarian  persuasion  —  it 
cannot  be  denied  that  he  possessed  the  art  of  making 
himself  thoroughly  respected  by  both  the  baptized 
and  the  circumcised.  He  indeed  pursued  his  main 
purpose,  which  was  the  acquiring  of  power,  with 
an  unscrupulousness  worthy  of  a  Roman  Emperor. 
Possibly  it  was  this  Roman  tenacity  in  him,  combined 
with  his  heathen  indifference  to  current  theology, 
which  propitiated  the  avenging  deities  of  Leo's  Hill. 
So  far  at  any  rate  he  had  been  eminently  successful 
in  his  speculations.  He  had  secured  complete  posses- 
sion of  every  quarry  on  the  formidable  eminence; 
and  the  company  of  which  he  was  both  director  and 
president  was  pursuing  its  activities  in  a  hundred  new 
directions.  It  had,  in  the  few  last  years,  gone  so  far 
as  to  begin  certain  engineering  assaults  upon  those 
remote  portions  of  the  ancient  escarpments  that  had 
been  left  untouched  since  the  legions  of  Claudius 
Caesar  encamped  under  their  protection. 

The  bulk  of  Mr.  Romer's  stone-works  were  on  the 


NEVILTON  11 


Hill  itself;  but  others,  intended  for  the  more  delicate 
finishing  touches,  were  situated  in  a  convenient  spot 
close  to  Nevilton  Station.  Out  of  these  sheds  and 
yards,  built  along  the  railway-track,  arose,  from 
morning  to  night,  the  monotonous,  not  unpleasing, 
murmur  of  wheels  and  saws  and  grindstones.  The 
contrast  between  these  sounds  and  the  sylvan  quiet- 
ness of  the  vicarage  garden,  which  sloped  down 
towards  them,  was  one  of  the  most  significant  indica- 
tions of  the  clash  of  the  Two  Mythologies  in  this 
place.  The  priest  meditating  among  his  roses  upon 
the  vanity  of  all  but  "heavenly  habitations"  might 
have  been  in  danger  of  being  too  obtrusively  reminded 
of  the  pride  of  the  houses  that  are  very  definitely 
"made  with  hands."  Perhaps  this  was  one  of  the 
reasons  why  the  present  incumbent  of  Nevilton  had 
preferred  a  more  undisturbed  retreat. 

The  general  manager  of  Mortimer  Romer's  quarries 
was  a  certain  Mr.  Lickwit,  who  served  also  as  his 
confidential  adviser  in  many  other  spheres. 

The  works  at  Nevilton  Station  were  left  to  the 
superintendence  of  two  brothers  named  Andersen, 
skilled  stone-cutters,  sons  of  the  famous  Gideon 
Andersen  known  to  architects  all  over  the  kingdom 
for  his  designs  in  Leonian  stone.  Both  Gideon 
and  his  wife  Naomi  were  buried  in  Nevilton  church- 
yard, and  the  brothers  were  condemned  in  the 
village  as  persons  of  an  almost  scandalous  piety 
because  of  their  innocent  habit  of  lingering  on  warm 
summer  evenings  over  their  parents'  grave.  They 
lived  together,  these  two,  as  lodgers  with  the  station- 
master,  in  a  newly  built  cottage  close  to  their  work. 
Their  social  position  in  the  place  was  a  curious  and 


12  WOOD  AND   STONE 

anomalous  one.  Their  father's  reputation  as  a  sculp- 
tor had  brought  him  into  touch  with  every  grade  of 
society;  and  the  woman  who  became  his  wife  was  by 
birth  what  is  usually  termed  a  lady.  Gideon  himself 
had  been  a  rough  and  gross  fellow;  and  after  his 
wife's  death  had  hastened  to  take  his  sons  away  from 
school  and  apprentice  them  to  his  own  trade.  They 
were  in  many  respects  a  noteworthy  pair,  though 
scarcely  favourites,  either  with  their  fellow-workmen 
or  their  manager. 

James  Andersen,  the  elder  by  some  ten  years,  was 
of  a  morose,  reserved  temper,  and  though  a  capable 
workman  never  seemed  happy  in  the  workshop. 
Luke,  on  the  contrary,  possessed  a  peculiarly  sunny 
and  serene  spirit. 

They  were  both  striking  in  appearance.  The 
younger  approximated  to  that  conventional  type  of 
beauty  which  is  popularly  known  as  being  "like  a 
Greek  god."  The  elder,  tall,  swarthy,  and  sinister, 
suggested  rather  the  image  of  some  gloomy  idol 
carved  on  the  wall  of  an  Assyrian  temple.  What, 
however,  was  much  more  remarkable  than  their 
appearance  was  their  devoted  attachment  to  one 
another.  They  lived,  worked,  ate,  drank,  walked 
and  slept  together.  It  was  impossible  to  separate 
them.  Had  Mr.  Lickwit  dismissed  James,  Luke  would 
immediately  have  thrown  down  his  tools.  Had 
Luke  been  the  banished  one,  James  would  have 
followed  him  into  exile. 

It  had  fallen  to  Mr.  Romer,  some  seven  years 
before  our  narrative  begins,  to  appoint  a  new  vicar 
to  Nevilton;  and  he  had  appointed  one  of  such 
fierce    ascetic    zeal    and    such    pronounced    socialistic 


NEVILTON  13 


sympathies,  that  he  had  done  nothing  since  but 
vehemently  and  bitterly  repent  his  choice. 

The  Promoter  of  Companies  had  been  betrayed 
into  this  blunder  by  the  impulse  of  revengeful 
caprice,  the  only  impulse  in  his  otherwise  well- 
balanced  nature  that  might  be  termed  dangerous  to 
himself. 

He  had  quarrelled  with  the  bishop  over  some 
matter  connected  with  his  stone- works;  and  in 
order  to  cause  this  distinguished  prelate  grief 
and  annoyance  he  had  looked  about  for  someone 
to  honour  who  was  under  the  episcopal  ban.  The 
bishop,  however,  was  of  so  discreet  a  temper  and 
so  popular  in  his  diocese  that  the  only  rebel  to  his 
authority  that  could  be  discovered  was  one  of  the 
curates  of  a  church  at  Yeoborough  who  had  in- 
sisted upon  preaching  the  Roman  doctrine  of  Tran- 
substantiation. 

The  matter  would  probably  have  lapsed  into 
quiescence,  save  for  the  crafty  interference  in  the 
local  newspaper  of  a  group  of  aggressive  Noncon- 
formists, who  took  this  opportunity  of  sowing  desir- 
able dissension  between  the  higher  and  lower  orders 
of  the  hated  Establishment. 

Mr.  Romer,  who,  like  Gallio,  cared  for  none  of 
these  things,  and  was  at  heart  a  good  deal  worse 
than  a  Nonconformist,  seized  upon  the  chance 
offered  by  the  death  of  Nevilton's  vicar;  and  in- 
stalled as  his  successor  this  rebel  to  ecclesiastical 
authority. 

Once  installed,  however,  the  Rev.  Hugh  Clavering 
speedily  came  to  an  understanding  with  his  bishop; 
compromised   on   the  matter    of    preaching   Transub- 


14  WOOD   AND   STONE 


stantiation;  and  apparently  was  allowed  to  go  on 
believing  in  it. 

And  it  was  then  that  the  Promoter  of  Companies 
learned  for  the  first  time  how  much  easier  it  is  to 
make  a  priest  than  to  unmake  him.  For  situation 
after  situation  arose  in  which  the  master  of  the 
Leonian  quarries  found  himself  confronted  by  an 
alien  Power  —  a  Power  that  refused  to  worship 
Sandstone.  Before  this  rupture,  however,  the  young 
Priest  had  persuaded  Mr.  Romer  to  let  him  live  in 
the  Old  Vicarage,  a  small  but  cheerful  house  just 
opposite  the  church  door.  The  orthodox  \dcarage, 
a  rambling  Early  Victorian  structure  standing  in 
its  own  grounds  at  the  end  of  the  West  Drive, 
was  let  —  once  more  at  the  Priest's  suggestion  —  to 
the  last  living  representatives  of  the  dispossessed 
Seldoms. 

It  indicated  a  good  deal  of  spirit  on  the  part  of 
Valentia  Seldom  and  her  daughter  thus  to  return  to 
the  home  of  their  ancestors. 

Mrs.  Seldom  was  a  cousin  of  the  man  who  had 
sold  the  estate.  Her  daughter  Vennie,  brought  up 
in  a  school  at  Florence,  had  never  seen  Nevilton, 
and  it  was  with  the  idea  of  taking  advantage  for  the 
girl's  sake  of  their  old  prestige  in  that  corner  of 
England  that  Valentia  accepted  Mr.  Romer's  offer 
and  became  the  vicarage  tenant. 

The  quarry-owner  himself  was  influenced  in  carry- 
ing through  this  affair,  by  his  anxiety,  for  the  sake 
of  his  daughter,  to  secure  a  firmer  footing  with  the 
aristocracy  of  the  neighborhood.  Here  again,  how- 
ever, he  was  destined  to  disappointment:  for  once 
in  possession  of  her  twenty  years'  lease  the  old  lady 


NEVILTON  15 


showed  not  the  least  intention  of  letting  herself  be 
used  as  a  social  stepping-stone. 

She  had,  indeed,  under  her  own  roof,  cause  enough 
for  preoccupation  and  concern. 

Her  daughter  —  a  little  ghost-moth  of  a  girl,  of 
fragile  delicacy  —  seemed  entirely  devoid  of  that 
mysterious  magnetic  attraction  which  lures  to  the 
side  of  most  virgins  the  devotion  of  the  opposite 
sex.  She  appeared  perfectly  content  to  remain  for- 
ever in  her  tender  maidenhood,  and  refused  to  exert 
the  slightest  effort  to  be  "nice"  to  the  charming 
young  people  her  mother  threw  in  her  way.  She 
belonged  to  that  class  of  young  girls  who  seem  to 
be  set  apart  by  nature  for  other  purposes  than  those 
of  the  propagation  of  the  race. 

Her  wistful  spirit,  shrinking  into  itself  like  the 
leaves  of  a  sensitive  plant  at  the  least  approach  of 
a  rough  hand,  responded  only  to  one  passionate 
impulse,  the  impulse  of  religion. 

She  grew  indeed  so  estranged  from  the  normal 
world,  that  it  was  not  only  Valentia  who  concealed 
the  thought  that  when  she  left  the  earth  the  ancient 
race  of  Seldoms  would  leave  it  with  her. 

Nor  was  it  only  in  regard  to  her  child's  religious 
obsession  that  the  lady  suffered.  She  had  flatly 
refused  to  let  her  enter  into  anything  but  the  cold- 
est relations  with  "those  dreadful  people  at  the 
House";  and  it  was  with  a  peculiar  shock  of  dismay 
that  she  found  that  the  girl  was  not  literally  obeying 
her.  It  was  not,  however,  to  the  Romers  themselves 
that  Vennie  made  her  shy  overtures,  but  to  a  luck- 
less little  relative  of  that  family  now  domiciled  with 
them  as  companion  to  Gladys  Romer. 


16  WOOD  AND   STONE 

This  young  dependent,  reputed  in  the  village  to 
be  of  Italian  origin,  struck  the  gentle  heart  of  the 
last  of  the  Seldoms  with  indescribable  pity.  She 
could  not  altogether  define  the  impression  the  girl 
produced  upon  her,  but  it  was  a  singularly  oppres- 
sive one,  and  it  vexed  and  troubled  her. 

The  situation  was  wretchedly  complicated.  It  was 
extremely  difficult  to  get  a  word  with  the  little  com- 
panion without  encountering  Gladys;  and  any  ap- 
proach to  intimacy  with  "the  Romer  girl"  would 
have  meant  an  impossible  scene  with  Mrs.  Seldom. 
Nor  was  it  a  light  undertaking,  in  such  hurried 
interviews  as  she  did  manage  to  secure,  to  induce 
the  child  to  drop  her  reserve.  She  would  fix  her 
great  brown  foreign  eyes  —  her  name  was  Lacrima 
TraflSo  —  on  Vennie's  face,  and  make  curious  little 
helpless  gestures  with  her  hands  when  questions 
were  asked   her;    but  speak  of  herself  she  would  not. 

It  was  clear  she  was  absolutely  dependent  on  her 
cousins.  Vennie  gathered  as  much  as  that,  as  she 
once  talked  with  her  under  the  church  wall,  when 
Gladys  was  chatting  with  the  vicar.  A  reference  to 
her  own  people  had  nearly  resulted  in  an  outburst 
of  tears.  Vennie  had  had  to  be  content  with  a 
broken  whisper:  "We  come  from  Rapallo — they 
are  all  dead."  There  was  nothing,  it  appeared,  that 
could  be  added  to  this. 

It  was  perhaps  a  little  inconsistent  in  the  old  lady 
to  be  so  resolute  against  her  daughter's  overtures  to 
Lacrima,  as  she  herself  had  no  hesitation  in  making 
a  sort  of  protege  of  another  of  Mr.  Romer's  tribe. 

This  was  an  eccentric  middle-aged  bachelor  who 
had  drifted  into  the  place  soon  after  the  newcomer's 


NEVILTON  17 


arrival  and  had  established  himself  in  a  dilapidated 
cottage  on  the  outskirts  of  the  Auber  woods. 

Remotely  related  to  Mrs.  Romer,  he  had  in  some 
way  become  dependent  on  her  husband,  whose  finan- 
cial advantage  over  him  was  not,  it  seemed,  as  time 
went  on,  exerted  in  a  very  considerate  manner. 

Maurice  Quincunx,  for  such  was  his  unusual  name, 
was  an  illegitimate  descendant  of  one  of  the  most 
historic  houses  in  the  neighborhood,  but  both  his 
poverty  and  his  opinions  caused  him  to  live  what 
was  practically  the  life  of  a  hermit,  and  made  him 
shrink  away,  even  more  nervously  than  little  Vennie 
Seldom,  from  any  intercourse  with  his  equals. 

The  present  possessors  of  his  queer  ancient  name 
were  now  the  Lords  of  Glastonbury,  and  had  prob- 
ably never  so  much  as  heard  of  Maurice's  existence. 

He  would  come  by  stealth  to  pay  Valentia  visits, 
preferring  the  evening  hours  when  in  the  summer 
she  used  to  sit  with  her  work,  on  a  terrace  over- 
looking a  sloping  orchard,  and  watch  Vennie  water 
her  roses. 

The  vicarage  terrace  was  a  place  of  extraordinary 
quiet  and  peace,  eminently  adapted  to  the  low-voiced, 
nervous  ramblings  of  a  recluse  of  Maurice  Quincunx's 
timidity. 

The  old  lady  by  degrees  quite  won  this  eccentric's 
heart;  and  the  queerly  assorted  friends  would  pace 
up  and  down  for  hours  in  the  cool  of  the  evening 
talking  of  things  in  no  way  connected  either  with 
Mr.  Romer  or  the  Church  —  the  two  subjects  about 
which  Mr.  Quincunx  held  dangerously  strong  views. 

Apart  from  this  quaint  outcast  and  the  youthful 
parson,    Mrs.    Seldom's    only    other    intimate    in    the 


18  WOOD  AND   STONE 


place  was  a  certain  John  Francis  Taxater,  a  gentle- 
man of  independent  means,  living  by  himself  with 
an  old  housekeeper  in  a  cottage  called  The  Gables, 
situated  about  half-way  between  the  vicarage  and 
the  village. 

Mr.  Taxater  w^as  a  Cathohc  and  also  a  philosopher; 
these  two  peculiarities  affording  the  solution  to  what 
otherwise  would  have  been  an  insoluble  psychic 
riddle.  Even  as  it  was,  Mr.  Taxater's  mind  was  of 
so  subtle  and  complicated  an  order,  that  he  was  at 
once  the  attraction  and  the  despair  of  all  the  re- 
ligious thinkers  of  that  epoch.  For  it  must  be 
understood  that  though  quietly  resident  under  the 
shadow  of  Nevilton  Mount,  the  least  essay  from  Mr. 
Taxater's  pen  was  eagerly  perused  by  persons  inter- 
ested in  religious  controversy  in  all  the  countries  of 
Europe. 

He  wrote  for  philosophical  journals  in  London, 
Paris,  Rome  and  New  York;  and  there  often  ap- 
peared at  The  Gables  most  surprising  visitors 
from  Germany  and  Italy  and  Spain. 

He  had  a  powerful  following  among  the  more 
subtle-minded  of  the  CathoHcs  of  England;  and  was 
highly  respected  by  important  personages  in  the  social, 
as  well  as  the  literary  circles,  of  Catholic  society. 

The  profundity  of  his  mind  may  be  gauged  from 
the  fact  that  he  was  able  to  steer  his  way  success- 
fully through  the  perilous  reefs  of  "modernistic" 
discussion,  without  either  committing  himself  to  he- 
retical doctrine  or  being  accused  of  reactionary  ultra- 
montanism. 

Mr.  Taxater's  written  works  were,  however,  but 
a  trifling  portion  of  his  personahty.     His  intellectual 


NEVILTON  19 


interests  were  as  rich  and  varied  as  those  of  some 
great  humanist  of  the  Itahan  Renaissance,  and  his 
personal  habits  were  as  involved  and  original  as  his 
thoughts  were  complicated  and  deep. 

He  was  perpetually  engaged  in  converting  the 
philosopher  in  him  to  Catholicism,  and  the  Catholic 
in  him  to  philosophy  —  yet  he  never  permitted  either 
of  these  obsessions  to  interfere  with  his  enjoyment 
of  life. 

Luke  Andersen,  who  was  perhaps  of  all  the  inhabi- 
tants of  Nevilton  most  conscious  of  the  drama 
played  around  him,  used  to  maintain  that  it  was 
impossible  to  tell  in  the  last  resort  whether  Mr. 
Taxater's  place  was  with  the  adherents  of  Christ  or 
with  the  adherents  of  Anti-Christ.  Like  his  proto- 
type, the  evasive  Erasmus,  he  seemed  able  to  be  on 
both  sides  at  the  same  time. 

Perhaps  it  was  a  secret  consciousness  of  the  singu- 
lar position  of  Nevilton,  planted,  as  it  were,  between 
two  streams  of  opposing  legend,  that  originally  led 
Mr.  Taxater  to  take  up  his  abode  in  so  secluded 
a  spot. 

It  is  impossible  to  tell.  In  this  as  in  all  other 
transactions  of  his  life  he  combined  an  unworldly 
simplicity  with  a  Machiavellian  astuteness.  If  the 
Day  of  Judgment  revealed  him  as  being  on  the  side 
of  the  angels,  it  might  also  reveal  him  as  having 
exercised,  in  the  microcosmic  Nevilton  drama,  as 
well  as  in  his  wider  sphere,  one  of  the  most  subtle 
influences  against  the  Powers  of  Darkness  that  those 
Powers    ever   encountered   in    their   invisible   activity. 

At  the  moment  when  the  present  narrative  takes 
up  the  woven  threads  of  these  various  persons'  lives 


20  WOOD  AND  STONE 


there  seemed  every  prospect  that  in  external  nature 
at  least  there  was  going  to  be  an  auspicious  and 
halcyon  season.  June  had  opened  with  abnormal 
pleasantness.  Exquisite  odours  were  in  the  air, 
wafted  from  woods  and  fields  and  gardens.  White 
dust,  alternating  with  tender  spots  of  coolness  where 
the  shadows  of  trees  fell,  lent  the  roads  in  the 
vicinity  that  leisured  gala-day  expectancy  which 
one  notes  in  the  roads  of  France  and  Spain,  but 
which  is  so  rare  in  England. 

It  seemed  almost  as  though  the  damp  sub-soil 
of  the  place  had  relaxed  its  maUgn  influence;  as 
though  the  yellow  clay  in  the  churchyard  had 
ceased  its  calling  for  victims;  and  as  though  the 
brooding  monster  in  the  sunset,  from  which  every 
day  half  the  men  of  the  village  returned  with  their 
spades  and  picks,  had  put  aside,  as  irrelevant  to  a 
new  and  kindlier  epoch,  its  ancient  hostility  to  the 
Christian  dwellers  in  that  quiet  valley. 


CHAPTER   III 
OLYMPIAN    CONSPIRACY 

THE  depths  of  Mr.  Romer's  mind,  as  he  paced 
up  and  down  the  Leonian  pavement  under  the 
east  front  of  his  house  on  one  of  the  early  days 
of  this  propitious  June,  were  seething  with  predatory 
projects.  The  last  of  the  independent  quarries  on  the 
Hill  had  just  fallen  into  his  hands  after  a  legal  process 
of  more  than  usual  chicanery,  conducted  in  person 
by  the  invaluable  Mr.  Lickwit. 

He  was  now  occupied  in  pushing  through  Parlia- 
ment a  bill  for  the  reduction  of  railway  freight 
charges,  so  that  the  expense  of  carrying  his  stone  to 
its  various  destinations  might  be  materially  reduced. 
But  it  was  not  only  of  financial  power  that  he  thought 
as  the  smell  of  the  roses  from  the  sun-baked  walls 
floated  in  upon  him  across  the  garden. 

The  man's  commercial  preoccupations  had  not  by 
any  means,  as  so  often  happens,  led  to  the  atrophy 
of  his  more  personal  instincts. 

His  erotic  appetite,  for  instance,  remained  as 
insatiable  as  ever.  Age  did  not  dull,  nor  finance 
wither,  that  primordial  craving.  The  aphrodisiac  in- 
stincts in  Mortimer  Romer  were,  however,  much  less 
simple  than  might  be  supposed. 

In  this  hyper-sensual  region  he  had  more  claim 
to  artistic  subtlety  than  his  enemies  realized.  He 
rarely  allowed  himself  the  direct  expansion  of  frank 


2?  WOOD  AND  STONE 

and  downright  lasciviousness.  His  little  pleasures 
were  indirect,  elaborate,  far-fetched. 

He  afforded  really  the  interesting  spectacle  of 
one  whose  mind  was  normal,  energetic,  dynamic; 
but  whose  senses  were  slow,  complicated,  fastidious. 
He  was  a  formidable  forward-marching  machine,  with 
a  heart  of  elaborate  perversity.  He  was  a  thick- 
skinned  philistine  with  the  sensuality  of  a  sybarite. 

I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  there  was  any  lack 
of  rapacity  in  the  senses  of  Mr.  Romer.  His  senses 
were  indeed  unfathomable  in  their  devouring  depths. 
But  they  were  liable  to  fantastic  caprices.  They 
were  not  the  simple  animal  senses  of  a  Gothic  bar- 
barian.    They  assumed  imperial  contortions. 

The  main  eccentricity  of  the  erotic  tendencies  of 
this  remarkable  man  lay  in  the  elaborate  pleasure  he 
derived  from  his  sense  of  power.  The  actual  lure  of 
the  flesh  had  little  attraction  for  him.  What  pleased 
him  was  a  slow  tightening  of  his  grip  upon  people  — 
upon  their  wills,  their  freedom,  their  personality. 

Any  impression  a  person  might  make  upon  Mr. 
Romer's  senses  was  at  once  transformed  into  a 
desire  to  have  that  person  absolutely  at  his  mercy. 
The  thought  that  he  held  such  a  one  reduced  to 
complete  spiritual  helplessness  alone  satisfied  him. 

The  first  time  he  had  encountered  Lacrima  Traffio 
he  had  been  struck  by  her  appealing  eyes,  her  fragile 
figure,  her  frightened  gestures.  Deep  in  his  perverted 
heart  he  had  desired  her;  but  his  desire,  under  the 
psychic  law  I  have  endeavoured  to  explain,  quickly 
resolved  itself  into  a  resolution  to  take  possession 
of  her,  not  as  his  mistress,  but  as  his  slave. 

Nor    did    the    subtle    elaboration    of    his    perversity 


OLYMPL\N   CONSPIRACY  23 

stop  there.  It  were  easy  and  superficial  to  dominate 
in  his  own  person  so  helpless  a  dependent.  What 
was  less  easy  was  to  reduce  her  to  submission  to 
the  despotic  caprices  of  his  daughter,  a  girl  only  a 
few  years  older  than  herself. 

The  enjoyment  of  a  sense  of  vicarious  power  was 
a  satisfaction  curiously  provocative  to  his  predatory 
craving.  Nor  did  subtlety  of  the  situation  stop  at 
that  point.  It  was  not  only  necessary  that  the  girl 
who  attracted  him  should  be  at  his  daughter's 
mercy;  it  was  necessary  that  his  daughter  should 
not  be  unconscious  of  the  role  she  herself  played. 
It  was  necessary  that  they  should  be  in  a  sense 
confederates  in  this  game  of  cat-and-mouse. 

As  Mr.  Romer  paced  the  terrace  of  his  imposing 
mansion  a  yet  profounder  triumph  presented  itself 
in  the  recesses  of  his   imperial  nature. 

He  had  lately  introduced  into  his  "entourage"  a 
certain  brother-in-law  of  his,  the  widower  of  his 
sister,  a  man  named  John  Goring.  This  individual 
was  of  a  much  simpler,  grosser  type  than  the  recon- 
dite quarry-owner.  He  was,  indeed,  no  more  than 
a  narrow-minded,  insolent,  avaricious  animal.  He 
lacked  even  the  superficial  gentility  of  his  formidable 
relation.  Nor  had  his  concentrated  but  unintelligent 
avarice  brought  him,  so  far,  any  great  wealth.  He 
still  remained,  in  spite  of  Romer's  help,  what  he 
had  been  born,  an  English  farmer  of  unpropitiating 
manners  and  supernal  greed. 

The  Promoter  of  Companies  was,  however,  not 
unaware,  any  more  than  was  Augustus  Caesar,  of 
the  advantage  accruing  to  a  despot  from  the  posses- 
sion of  devoted,  if  unattractive,  tools;    and  contemp- 


24 WOOD   AND   STONE 

tuously  risking  the  shock  to  his  social  prestige  of 
such  an  apparition  in  the  neighborhood,  he  had 
secured  Mr.  Goring  as  a  permanent  tenant  of  the 
largest  farm  on  his  estate.  This  was  no  other  than 
the  Priory  Farm,  with  its  gentle  monastic  memories. 
^Vhat  the  last  Prior  of  Nevilton  would  have  thought 
could  he  have  left  his  grave  under  St,  Catherine's 
altar  and  reappeared  among  his  dovecotes  it  is 
distressing  to  surmise.  He  would  doubtless  have 
drawn  from  the  sight  of  John  Goring  a  profoundly 
edifying  moral  as  to  the  results  of  royal  inter- 
ference with  Christ's  Holy  Church.  Nor  is  it  likely 
that  an  encounter  with  Mr.  Romer  himself  would 
have  caused  less  astonishment  to  his  mediaeval 
spirit.  He  would,  indeed,  have  recognized  that  what 
is  now  called  Progress  is  no  mere  scientific  phrase; 
but  a  most  devastating  reality.  He  would  have 
found  that  Nevilton  had  "progressed"  very  far.  He 
would  have  believed  that  the  queer  stone-devils  that 
his  monks  had  carved,  half  emerging  from  the  eaves 
of  the  church-roof,  had  got  quite  loose  and  gone 
abroad  among  men.  Had  he  probed,  in  the  manner 
of  clairvoyant  saints,  the  troubled  recesses  of  Mr. 
Romer's  mind  as  that  gentleman  inhaled  the  sweet 
noon  air,  he  would  have  cried  aloud  his  indignation 
and  made  the  sign  of  the  cross  as  if  over  a  mortuary 
of  spiritual  decomposition. 

For  as  the  mid-day  sun  of  that  hot  June  morning 
culminated,  and  the  clear  hard  shadows  fell,  sharp 
and  thin,  upon  the  orange-tinted  pavement,  it  en- 
tered Mr.  Romer's  head  that  he  might  make  a  more 
personal  use  of  his  farmer-brother  than  had  until 
now  been  possible. 


OLYMPIAN   CONSPIRACY  25 

With  this  idea  in  his  brain  he  entered  the  house 
and  sought  his  wife  in  her  accustomed  place  at  the 
corner  of  the  large  reception-hall.  He  sat  down 
forthright  by  the  side  of  her  mahogany  table  and 
lit  a  cigar.  As  Mr.  Romer  was  the  species  of  male 
animal  that  might  be  written  down  in  the  guide- 
book of  some  Martian  visitor  as  "the  cigar-smoking 
variety"  his  wife  would  have  taken  her  place  among 
"the  sedentary  knitting  ones." 

She  was  a  large,  fair,  plump,  woman,  as  smooth 
and  pallid  as  her  husband  was  grizzled  and  ruddy. 
Her  obsequious  deference  to  her  lord's  views  was  only 
surpassed  by  her  lethargic  animal  indolence.  She 
was  like  a  great,  tame,  overgrown,  white-skinned 
Puma.  Her  eyes  had  the  greenish  tint  of  feline  eyes, 
and  something  of  their  daylight  contraction.  Her 
use  of  spectacles  did  not  modify  this  tendency,  but 
rather  increased  it;  for  the  effect  of  the  round  glass 
orbs  pushed  up  upon  her  forehead  was  to  enhance 
the  malicious  gleam  of  the  little  narrow-lidded  slits 
that  peered  out  beneath  them. 

It  may  be  imagined  with  what  weary  and  ironical 
detachment  the  solemn  historic  portraits  of  the  ancient 
Seldoms  —  for  the  pictures  and  furniture  had  been 
sold  with  the  house  —  looked  out  from  their  gilded 
frames  upon  these  ambiguous  intruders.  But  neither 
husband  nor  wife  felt  the  least  touch  of  "compunctu- 
ous  visiting"  as  they  made  themselves  at  ease  under 
that  immense  contempt. 

"I  have  been  thinking,"  said  Mr.  Romer,  puffing 
a  thick  cloud  of  defiant  smoke  into  the  air,  so  that 
it  went  sailing  up  to  the  very  feet  of  a  delicate 
Reynolds  portrait;    "I  have  been  thinking  that  I  am 


26  WOOD   AND   STOXE 

really  quite  unjustified  in  going  on  with  that  allow- 
ance to  Quincunx.  He  ought  to  realize  that  he  has 
completely  exhausted  the  money  your  aunt  left  him. 
He  ought  to  face  the  situation,  instead  of  quietly 
accepting  our  gift  as  if  it  were  his  right.  And  they 
tell  me  he  does  not  even  keep  a  civil  tongue  in  his 
head.  Lickwit  was  only  complaining  the  other  day 
about  his  tampering  with  our  workmen.  He  has 
been  going  about  for  some  time  with  those  damned 
Andersen  fellows,  and  no  doubt  encouraging  them  in 
their  confounded  impertinence. 

I  don't  like  the  man,  my  dear;  —  that  is  the  plain 
truth.  I  have  never  liked  him;  and  he  has  certainly 
never  even  attempted  to  conceal  his  dislike  of  me. 

"He  is  very  polite  to  your  face,  Mortimer,"  mur- 
mured the  lady. 

"Exactly,"  Mr.  Romer  rejoined,  "to  my  face  he  is 
more  than  polite.  He  is  obsequious;  he  is  cringing. 
But  behind  my  back  —  damn  him !  —  the  rascal  is 
a  rattlesnake." 

"Well,  dear,  no  doubt  it  has  all  worked  out  for 
the  best";  purred  the  plump  woman,  softly  counting 
the  threads  of  her  knitting.  "You  were  in  need  of 
Aunt's  money  at  the  time  —  in  great  need  of  it." 

"I  know  I  was,"  replied  the  Promoter  of  Com- 
panies, "I  know  I  was;  and  he  knows  I  was.  That 
is  why  I  have  been  giving  him  six  per  cent  on  what 
he  lent  me.  But  the  fellow  has  had  more  than 
that.  He  has  had  more  by  this  time  than  the  whole 
original  sum;  and  I  tell  you,  Susan,  it's  got  to  end; 
—  its  got  to  end  here,  now,  and  forever!" 

Mr.  Romer's  cigar-smoke  had  now  floated  up  above 
the  feet  of  the  Reynolds  Portrait  and  was  invading 


OLYMPIAN   CONSPIRACY  27 

its  gentle  and  melancholy  face.  It  was  a  portrait 
of  a  young  girl  in  the  court-dress  of  the  time,  but 
with  such  pathetic  nun-like  features  that  it  was 
clear  that  little  Vennie  was  not  the  only  one  of  her 
race  to  have  grown  weary  of  this  rough  world. 

"It  is  a  providential  thing,  dear,"  whispered  the 
knitting  female,  "that  there  were  no  horrid  docu- 
ments drawn  up  about  that  money.  Maurice  cannot 
impose  upon  us  in  that  way." 

"He  is  doing  worse,"  answered  her  husband.  "He 
is  imposing  upon  us  on  the  strength  of  a  disgusting 
sort  of  sickly  sentiment.  He  has  had  all  his  money 
back  and  more;  and  he  knows  he  has.  But  he  wants 
to  go  on  living  on  my  money  while  he  abuses  me 
on  every  occasion.  Do  you  know,  he  even  preaches 
in  that  confounded  social  meeting?  I  shall  have  that 
affair  put  a  stop  to,  one  of  these  days.  It  is  only  an 
excuse  for  spreading  dissatisfaction  in  the  village. 
Lickwit  has  complained  to  me  about  it  more  than 
once.  He  says  that  SociaUstic  scoundrel  Wone  is 
simply  using  the  meeting  to  canvass  for  his  election. 
You  know  he  is  going  to  stand,  in  place  of  Sir 
Herbert  Ratcliffe?  What  the  Liberal  Party  is  doing 
I  cannot  conceive  —  pandering  to  these  slimy  wind- 
bags! And  your  blessed  relation  backs  him  up.  The 
thing  is  monstrous,  outrageous!  Here  am  I,  allowing 
this  fellow  a  hundred  a  year  to  live  in  idleness;  and 
he  is  plotting  against  me  at  my  very  doorstep." 

"Perhaps  he  does  not  know  that  the  Conservative 
member  is  going  to  retire  in  your  favour,"  insinuated 
the  lady. 

"Know?  Of  course  he  knows!  All  the  village 
knows.     All  the  country  knows.     You  can  never  hide 


28  WOOD  AND   STONE 

things  of  that  kind.  He  knows,  and  he  is  deliber- 
ately working  against  me." 

"It  would  be  nice  if  he  could  get  a  place  as  a 
clerk,"  suggested  Mr.  Quincunx's  relative,  pensively. 
"It  certainly  does  not  seem  fair  that  you,  who  work 
so  hard  for  the  money  you  make,  should  support  him 
in  complete  idleness." 

Mr.  Romer  looked  at  her  thoughtfully,  knocking 
the  ashes  from  his  cigar.  "I  believe  you  have  hit 
it  there,  my  dear,"  he  said.  Then  he  smiled  in  a 
manner  peculiarly  mahgnant.  "Yes,  it  would  be  very 
nice  if  he  could  get  a  place  as  a  clerk  —  a  place 
where  he  would  have  plenty  of  simple  office  work  — 
a  place  where  he  would  be  kept  to  his  desk,  and  not 
allowed  to  roam  the  country  corrupting  honest  work- 
men. Yes,  you  are  quite  right,  Susan;  a  clerk's 
place  is  what  this  Quincunx  wants.  And,  by  Heaven, 
what  he  shall  have!  I'll  bring  the  affair  to  a  head 
at  once.  I'll  put  it  to  him  that  your  aunt's  money  is 
at  an  end,  and  that  I  have  already  paid  him  back 
in  full  all  that  he  lent  me.  I'll  put  it  to  him  that 
he  is  now  in  my  debt.  In  fact,  that  he  is  now 
entirely  dependent  on  me  to  the  tune  of  a  hundred 
a  year.  And  I'll  explain  to  him  that  he  must  either 
go  out  into  the  world  and  shift  for  himself,  as  better 
men  than  he  have  had  to  do,  or  enter  Lickwit's 
office,  either  in  Yeoborough  or  on  the  Hill." 

"He  will  enter  the  office,  Mortimer,"  murmured 
the  lady;  "he  will  enter  the  office.  Maurice  is  not 
the  man  to  emigrate,  or  do  anything  of  that  kind. 
Besides  he  has  a  reason"  —  here  her  voice  became 
so  extremely  mellifluous  that  it  might  almost  be 
said  to  have  liquefied  —  "to  stay  in  Nevilton." 


OLYMPIAN  CONSPIRACY  29 

"What's  this?"  cried  Romer,  getting  up  and  throw- 
ing his  cigar  out  of  the  window.  "You  don't  mean 
to  tell  me  —  eh?  —  that  this  scarecrow  is  in  love 
with  Gladys?" 

The  lady  purred  softly  and  replaced  her  spectacles. 
"Oh  dear  no!  What  an  idea!  Oh  certainly,  certainly 
not!  But  Gladys,  you  know,  is  not  the  only  girl  in 
Nevilton." 

"Who  the  devil  is  it  then?  Not  Vennie  Seldom, 
surely?" 

"Look  nearer,  Mortimer,  look  nearer";  murmured 
the  lady  with  sibilant  sweetness. 

"Not  Lacrimal     You  don't  mean  to  say — " 

"Why,  dear,  you  needn't  be  so  surprised.  You 
look  more  angry  than  if  it  had  been  Gladys  herself. 
Yes,  of  course  it  is  Lacrima.  Hadn't  you  observed 
it?  But  you  dear  men  are  so  stupid,  aren't  you,  in 
these  things?" 

Mrs.  Romer  rubbed  one  white  hand  over  the 
other;  and  beamed  upon  her  husband  through  her 
spectacles. 

Mr.  Romer  frowned.  "But  the  TraflBo  girl  is  so, 
so  —  you  know  what  I  mean." 

"So  quiet  and  unimpressionable.  Ah!  my  dear, 
it  is  just  these  quiet  girls  who  are  the  very  ones  to 
be  enjoying  themselves  on  the  sly." 

"How  far  has  this  thing  gone,  Susan?" 

"Oh  you  needn't  get  excited,  Mortimer.  It  has  not 
really  'gone'  anywhere.  It  has  hardly  begun.  In 
fact  I  have  not  the  least  authority  for  saying  that 
she  cares  for  him  at  all.  I  think  she  does  a  little, 
though.  I  think  she  does.  But  one  never  can  tell. 
I  can,  however,  give  you  my  word  that  he  cares  for 


30 WOOD   AND   STONE 

her.  And  that  is  what  we  were  talking  about,  weren't 
we?" 

"I  shall  pack  him  off  to  my  office  in  London," 
said  Mr.  Homer. 

"He  wouldn't  go,  my  dear.     I  tell  you  he  wouldn't 

go." 

"But  he  can't  live  on  nothing." 

"He  can.  He  will.  Sooner  than  leave  Nevilton 
Maurice  would  eat  grass.  He  would  become  lay- 
reader  or  something.  He  would  sponge  on  Mrs. 
Seldom." 

"Well,  then  he  shall  walk  to  Yeoborough  and 
back  every  day.     That  will  cool  his  blood  for  him." 

"That  will  do  him  a  great  deal  of  good,  dear;  a 
great  deal  of  good.  Auntie  always  used  to  say  that 
Maurice  ought  to  take  more  exercise." 

"Lickwit  will  exercise  him!  Make  no  mistake  about 
that." 

"How  you  do  look  round  you,  dear,  in  all  these 
things!  How  impossible  it  is  for  anyone  to  fool  youy 
Mortimer!" 

As  Mrs.  Romer  uttered  these  words  she  glanced 
up  at  the  Reynolds  portrait  above  their  heads,  as 
if  half-suspecting  that  such  fawning  flattery  would 
bring  down  the  mockery  of  the  little  Lady-in- 
Waiting. 

"I  can't  help  thinking  Lacrima  would  make  a  very 
good  wife  to  some  hard-working  sensible  man," 
Mr.  Romer  remarked. 

His  lady  looked  a  little  puzzled.  "It  would  be 
difficult  to  find  so  suitable  a  companion  for  Gladys," 
she  said. 

"Oh,  of  course  I  don't  mean  till  Gladys  is  married," 


OLYMPIAN   CONSPIRACY  31 

said  the  quarry-owner  quickly.  "By  the  way,  when 
is  she  going  to  accept  that  young  fool  of  an 
Ilminster?" 

"All  in  good  time,  my  dear,  all  in  good  time," 
purred  his  wife.     "He  has  not  proposed  to  her  yet." 

"It's  very  curious,"  remarked  Mr.  Romer  pensively, 
"that  a  young  man  of  such  high  connections  should 
wish  to  marry  our  daughter." 

"What  things  you  say,  Mortimer!  Isn't  Gladys 
going  to  inherit  all  this  property  .f*  Don't  you  sup- 
pose that  a  younger  son  of  Lord  Tintinhull  would 
jump  at  the  idea  of  being  master  of  this  house.''" 

"He  won't  be  master  of  it  while  /  live,"  said  Mr. 
Romer  grimly. 

"In  my  opinion  he  never  will  be";  added  the  lady. 
"I  don't  think  Gladys  really  intends  to  accept  him." 

"She'll  marry  somebody,  I  hope?"  said  the  master 
sharply. 

"O  yes  she'll  marry,  soon  enough.  Only  it'll  be  a 
cleverer  man,  and  a  richer  man,  than  young  Ilminster." 

"Have  you  any  other  pleasant  little  romance  to 
fling  at  me?" 

"O  no.  But  I  know  what  our  dear  Gladys  is.  I 
know  what  she  is  looking  out  for." 

"When  she  does  marry,"  said  Mr.  Romer,  "we 
shall  have  to  think  seriously  what  is  to  become  of 
Lacrima.  Look  here,  my  dear,"  —  it  was  wonderful, 
the  pleasant  ejaculatory  manner  in  which  this  flash 
of  inspiration  was  thrown  out,  —  "why  not  marry 
her  to  John?  She  would  be  just  the  person  for  a 
farmer's  wife." 

Mrs.  Romer,  to  do  her  justice,  showed  signs  of 
being  a  little  shocked  at  this  proposal. 


32  WOOD  AND  STONE 

"But  John,"  —  she  stammered;  —  "John  —  is  not 
—  exactly  —  a  marrying  person,  is  he?" 

"He  is  —  what  I  wish  him  to  be";  was  her  hus- 
band's haughty  answer. 

"Oh  well,  of  course,  dear,  it's  as  you  think  best. 
Certainly"  —  the  good  woman  could  not  resist  this 
little  thrust  —  "its  John's  only  chance  of  marrying 
a  lady.     For  Lacrima  is  that  —  with  all  her  faults." 

"I  shall  talk  to  John  about  it";  said  the  Promoter 
of  Companies.  Feline  thing  though  she  was,  Susan 
Romer  could  not  refrain  from  certain  inward  qualms 
when  she  thought  of  the  fragile  hyper-sensitive  Italian 
in  the  embraces  of  John  Goring.  What  on  earth  set 
her  husband  dreaming  of  such  a  thing?  But  he  was 
subject  to  strange  caprices  now  and  then;  and  it  was 
more  dangerous  to  balk  him  in  these  things  than  in  his 
most  elaborate  financial  plots.  She  had  found  that 
out  already.  So,  on  the  present  occasion,  she  made 
no  further  remark,  than  a  reiterated  —  "How  you  do 
look  all  round  you,  Mortimer!  It  is  not  easy  for 
anyone  to  fool  you." 

She  rose  from  her  seat  and  collected  her  knitting. 
"I  must  go  and  see  where  Gladys  is,"  she  said. 

Mr.  Romer  followed  her  to  the  door,  and  went  out 
again  upon  the  terrace.  The  little  nun-like  Lady-in- 
Waiting  looked  steadily  out  across  the  room,  her 
pinched  attenuated  features  expressing  nothing  but 
patient  weariness  of  all  the  ways  of  this  mortal  world. 


CHAPTER   IV 

REPRISALS    FROM    BELOW 

IT  was  approaching  the  moment  consecrated  to 
the  close  of  the  day's  labour  in  the  stone- 
works by  Nevilton  railway-station.  The  sky  was 
cloudless;  the  air  windless.  It  was  one  of  those 
magical  arrests  of  the  gliding  feet  of  time,  which 
afternoons  in  June  sometimes  bring  with  them,  hold- 
ing back,  as  it  were,  all  living  processes  of  life,  in 
sweet  and  lingering  suspense.  The  steel  tracks  of  the 
railway-line  glittered  in  the  sun.  In  the  fields,  that 
sloped  away  beyond  them,  the  browsing  cattle  wore 
that  unruffled  air  of  abysmal  indifference,  which  seems 
to  make  one  day  in  their  sight  to  be  as  a  thousand 
years.  To  these  placid  earth-children,  drawing  the 
centuries  together  in  solemn  continuity,  the  tribes  of 
men  and  their  turbulent  drama  were  but  as  vapours 
that  came  and  went.  The  high  elms  in  the  hedges 
had  already  assumed  that  dark  monotonous  foliage 
which  gives  to  their  patient  stillness  on  such  a  day 
an  atmosphere  of  monumental  expectancy.  A  flock 
of  newly-sheared  sheep,  clean  and  shining  in  the  hot 
sun,  drifted  in  crowded  procession  down  the  narrow 
road,  leaving  a  cloud  of  white  dust  behind  them  that 
remained  stationary  in  the  air  long  after  they  had 
passed.  In  the  open  stone-yard  close  to  the  road  the 
brothers  Andersen  were  working  together,  chipping 
and  hammering  with  bare  arms  at  an  enormous  Leo- 


34 WOOD   AND   STONE 

nian  slab,  carving  its  edges  into  delicate  mouldings. 
The  younger  of  the  two  wore  no  hat,  and  his  closely 
clipped  fair  curls  and  loose  shirt  open  at  the  throat, 
lent  him,  as  he  moved  about  his  work  with  easy 
gestures,  a  grace  and  charm  well  adapted  to  that 
auspicious  hour. 

A  more  sombre  form  by  his  brother's  side,  his  broad 
brimmed  hat  low  down  over  his  forehead,  the  elder 
Andersen  went  on  with  his  carving,  in  imperturbable 
morose  absorption. 

Watching  them  with  languid  interest,  their  arms 
linked  together,  stood  the  figures  of  two  girls.  The 
yellow  dust  from  the  sandstone  rose  intermittently 
into  the  air,  mingling  with  the  white  dust  from  the 
road  and  settling,  as  it  sank  earthward,  upon  the 
leaves  of  the  yet  unbudded  knapweed  and  scabious 
which  grew  in  the  thin  dusty  grass. 

Between  Gladys  and  her  cousin  —  for  the  girls  had 
wandered  as  far  as  this  in  search  of  distraction  after 
their  lazy  tea  on  the  great  lawn  —  a  curious  contrast 
was  now  displayed. 

Gladys,  with  slow  provocative  interest,  was  intent 
on  every  movement  of  Luke's  graceful  figure.  La- 
crima's  attention  wandered  wistfully  away,  to  the 
cattle  and  the  orchards,  and  then  to  the  sheep,  which 
now  were  being  penned  in  a  low  line  of  spacious 
railway  trucks. 

Luke  himself  was  by  no  means  unaware  of  the 
condescending  interest  of  his  master's  daughter.  He 
paused  in  his  work  once  or  twice.  He  turned  up  his 
shirt-sleeves  still  higher.  He  bent  down,  to  blow 
away  the  dust  from  the  moulding  he  had  made. 
Something   very   like   a   flash   of   amorous   admiration 


REPRISALS   FROM   BELOW  35 

passed  across  his  blue  eyes  as  he  permitted  them  slyly 
to  wander  from  Gladys'  head  to  her  waist,  and  from 
her  waist  to  her  shoes.     She  certainly  was  an  alluring 
figure  as  she  stood  there  in  her  thin  white  dress.     The 
hand    which    pulled    her    skirt    away    from    the    dust 
showed  as  soft  and  warm  as  if  it  were  pleading  for  a 
caress,  and  the  rounded  contours  of  her  bosom  looked 
as  if  they  had  ripened  with  the  early  peaches,  under 
the   walls   of   her   stately   garden.     She   presently   un- 
linked her  arm  from  her  companion's,  and  sliding  it 
softly  round  Lacrima's  side  drew  the  girl  close  against 
her.     As  she  did  this  she  permitted  a  slow  amorous 
glance   of   deliberate   tantalization   to   play   upon   the 
young  carver.     How  well  Luke  Andersen  knew  that 
especial  device  of  maidens  when  they  are  together  — 
that  way  they  have  of  making  their  playful,  innocent 
caresses   such   a  teasing  incentive!     And   Luke   knew 
well   how   to    answer    all    this.     Nothing   could   have 
surpassed   in   subtle  diplomacy  the   manner  in   which 
he    responded,    without    responding,    to    the    amorous 
girl's  overtures.     He  let  her  realize  that  he  himself 
understood  precisely  the  limits  of  the  situation;    that 
she  was  perfectly  at  liberty  to  enter  a  mock-flirtation 
with    him,    without    the   remotest   risk   of   any    "faux 
pas"  on  his  part  spoiling  the  delicacy  of  their  relations. 
What  was  indeed  obvious  to  her,  without  the  neces- 
sity of  any  such  unspoken  protestation,  was  the  fact 
that  he  found  her  eminently  desirable.     Nor  did  her 
pride  as  "the  girl  up  at  the  house"  quarrel  with  her 
vanity   as    the    simple    object   of    Luke's    admiration. 
She  wanted  him  to  desire  her  as  a  girl;  —  to  desire 
her  to  madness.     And  then  she  wanted  to  flout  him, 
with    her    pretensions    as    a    lady.     This    particular 


36  WOOD   AND   STOXE 

occasion  was  by  no  means  the  first  time  she  had 
drifted  casually  down  the  vicarage  hill  and  lingered 
beside  the  stone-cutters.  It  was,  however,  an  epoch 
in  their  curious  relations.  For  the  first  time  since 
she  had  been  attracted  to  him,  she  deliberately  moved 
close  up  to  the  stone  he  worked  at,  and  entered  into 
conversation.  While  this  occurred,  Lacrima,  released 
from  her  role  as  the  accomplice  of  amorous  teasing, 
wandered  away,  picking  listlessly  the  first  red  pop- 
pies of  the  year,  which  though  less  flaunting  in 
their  bold  splendour  than  those  of  her  childhood's 
memories,  were  at  least  the  same  immortal  classical 
flowers. 

As  she  bent  down  in  this  assuaging  pastime,  letting 
her  thoughts  wander  so  far  from  Nevilton  and  its 
tyrants,  Lacrima  became  suddenly  conscious  that 
James  Andersen  had  laid  down  his  tools,  resumed  his 
coat,  and  was  standing  by  her  side. 

"A  beautiful  evening,  Miss";  he  said  respectfully, 
holding  his  hat  in  his  hand  and  regarding  her  with 
grave  gentleness. 

"Yes,  isn't  it?"  she  answered  at  once;  and  then 
was  silent;  while  a  sigh  she  could  not  suppress  rose 
from  the  depths  of  her  heart.  For  her  thoughts 
reverted  to  another  fair  evening,  in  the  days  when 
England  was  no  more  than  a  name;  and  a  sudden 
overpowering  longing  for  kind  voices,  and  the  shadows 
of  olives  on  warm  hill-sides,  rushed,  like  a  wave,  over 
her. 

"This  must  be  near  the  Angelus-hour,"  she  thought; 
and  somehow  the  dark  grave  eyes  of  the  man  be- 
side her  and  his  swarthy  complexion  made  her  think 
of    those    familiar    forms    that    used    to    pass    driving 


REPRISALS   FROM   BELOW  37 

their  goats  before  them  up  the  rocky  paths  of  the 
Apennine  range. 

"You  are  unhappy.  Miss,"  said  James  in  a  low 
voice;  and  these  words,  the  only  ones  of  genuine 
personal  tenderness,  except  for  poor  Maurice's,  that 
had  struck  her  sense  for  the  last  twelve  months, 
brought  tears  to  her  eyes.  Vennie  Seldom  had 
spoken  kindly  to  her;  but  —  God  knows  —  there  is  a 
difference  between  the  kindness  even  of  the  gentlest 
saint  and  this  direct  spontaneous  outflow  of  one 
heart  to  another.     She  smiled;   a  little  mournful  smile. 

"Yes;  I  was  thinking  of  my  own  country,"  she 
murmured. 

"You  are  an  Italian,  Miss;  I  know  it";  continued 
Andersen,  instinctively  leading  her  further  away  from 
the  two  golden  heads  that  now  were  bending  so  close 
together  over  the  Leonian  stone. 

"I  often  think  of  Italy,"  he  went  on;  "I  think  I 
should  be  at  home  in  Italy.  I  love  everything  I  hear 
of  it,  everything  I  read  of  it.  It  comes  from  my 
mother,  this  feeling.  She  was  a  lady,  you  know  Miss, 
as  well  born  as  any  and  with  a  passionate  love  of 
books.  She  used  to  read  Dante  in  that  little  'Tem- 
ple' Series,  which  perhaps  you  have  seen,  with  the 
Italian  on  one  side  and  the  English  on  the  other.  I 
never  look  at  that  book  without  thinking  of  her." 

"You  have  many  books  yourself,  I  expect, —  Mr.  — 
Andersen.  You  see  I  know  your  name."  And 
Lacrima  smiled,  the  first  perfectly  happy  smile  she 
had  been  betrayed  into  for  many  months. 

"It  is  not  a  very  nice  name,"  said  James,  a  little 
plaintively.  I  wish  I  had  a  name  like  yours  Miss  — 
TrafEo." 


38  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"Why,  I  think  yours  is  quite  as  nice,"  she  answered 
gravely.  "It  makes  me  think  of  the  man  who  wrote 
the  fairy  stories." 

James  Andersen  frowned,  "I  don't  like  fairy 
stories,"  he  said  almost  gruffly,  "They  tease  and  fret 
me.  I  like  Thomas  Hardy's  books.  Do  you  know 
Thomas  Hardy?"  Lacrima  made  a  little  involuntary 
gesture  of  depreciation.  As  a  matter  of  fact  her 
reading,  until  very  lately,  had  been  as  conventual  as 
that  of  a  young  nun.  Vennie  Seldom  or  the  demure 
Reynolds  girl  could  not  have  been  more  innocent  of 
the  darker  side  of  literature.  Hardy's  books  she  had 
seen  in  the  hands  of  Gladys,  and  the  association 
repelled  her.  Pathetically  anxious  to  brush  away  this 
little  cloud,  she  began  hurriedly  talking  to  her  new 
friend  of  Italy;  of  its  cities,  its  sea-coasts,  its  mon- 
asteries, its  churches.  James  Andersen  listened  with 
reverential  attention,  every  now  and  then  asking  a 
question  which  show^ed  how  deeply  his  mother's  love 
of  the  classical  country  had  sunk  into  his  nature. 

By  this  time  they  had  wandered  along  the  road  as 
far  as  a  little  stone  bridge  with  low  parapets  which 
crosses  there  a  muddy  Somersetshire  stream.  From 
this  point  the  road  rises  qtiite  steeply  to  the  beginning 
of  the  \'icarage  garden.  Leaning  against  the  parapet 
of  the  little  bridge,  and  looking  back,  they  saw  to 
their  surprise  that  Gladys  and  Luke  had  not  only  not 
followed  them  but  had  completely  disappeared. 

The  last  of  the  unskilled  workmen  from  the  sheds, 
trailing  up  the  road  together  laughing  and  chatting, 
turned  when  they  passed,  and  gazed  back,  as  our 
two  companions  were  doing,  at  the  work-shops 
they  had  left,  acknowledging  Lacrima's  gentle  "good- 


REPRISALS   FROM   BELOW  39 

night"  with  a  rather  shifty  salutation.  —  This  girl 
was  after  all  only  a  dependent  like  themselves.  — 
They  had  hardly  gone  many  steps  before  they  burst 
into  a  loud  rough  guffaw  of  rustic  impertinence. 

Lacrima  struck  the  ground  nervously  with  her 
parasol.  "What  has  happened.^"  she  asked;  "where 
has  Gladys  gone?" 

James  Andersen  shrugged  his  shoulders,  "I  expect 
they  have  wandered  into  the  shed,"  he  rejoined,  "to 
look  at  my  brother's  work  there." 

She  glanced  nervously  up  and  down  the  road; 
gave  a  quaint  little  sigh  and  made  an  expressive 
gesture  with  her  hands  as  if  disclaiming  all  responsi- 
bility for  her  cousin's  doings.  Then,  quite  suddenly, 
she  smiled  at  Andersen  with  a  delicious  childish  smile 
that  transfigured  her  face. 

"Well,  I  am  glad  I  am  not  left  alone  at  any  rate," 
she  said. 

"I  have  a  presentiment,"  the  stone-cutter  an- 
swered, "that  this  is  not  the  last  time  you  will  be 
thrown  upon  my  poor  company." 

The  girl  blushed,  and  smiled  confidingly.  Her 
manner  was  the  manner  of  a  child,  who  has  at  last 
found  a  safe  protector.  Then  all  of  a  sudden  she 
became  very  grave.  "I  hope,"  she  said,  "that  you 
are  one  of  the  people  who  are  kind  to  Mr.  Quincunx. 
He  is  a  great  friend  of  mine." 

Never  had  the  melancholy  intimation,  that  one 
could  not  hope  to  hold  anything  but  the  second  place 
in  a  woman's  heart,  been  more  tenderly  or  more 
directly  conveyed! 

James  Andersen  bowed  his  head. 

"Mr.  Quincunx  has  always  been  very  kind  to  me" 


40  WOOD  AND   STONE 

he  said,  "and  certainly,  after  what  you  say,  I  shall 
do  all  in  my  power  to  help  him.  But  I  can  do  very 
little.  I  believe  Mrs,  Seldom  understands  him  better 
than  anyone  else." 

He  had  hardly  finished  speaking  when  the  figures 
of  two  men  made  themselves  visible  opposite  the 
back  entrance  of  the  vicarage.  They  were  leisurely 
strolling  down  the  road,  and  every  now  and  then  they 
would  pause,  as  if  the  interest  of  their  conversation 
was  more  than  the  interest  of  the  way. 

"Why!  There  is  Mr.  Quincunx,"  cried  the  Italian; 
and  she  made  an  instinctive  movement  as  if  to  put  a 
little  further  space  between  herself  and  her  companion. 
"Who  is  that  person  with  him.''"  she  added. 

"It  looks  like  George  Wone,"  answered  the  stone- 
cutter. "Yes,  it  is  George;  and  he  is  talking  as 
usual  at  the  top  of  his  voice.  You'd  suppose  he 
wanted  to  be  heard  by  all  Nevilton." 

Lacrima  hesitated  and  looked  very  embarrassed. 
She  evidently  did  not  know  whether  to  advance  in 
the  direction  of  the  newcomers  or  to  remain  w^here 
she  was.     Andersen  came  to  her  rescue. 

"Perhaps,"  said  he,  "it  would  be  better  if  I  went 
back  and  told  Miss  Romer  you  are  waiting  for  her." 
Lacrima  gave  him  a  quick  glance  of  responsive 
gratitude. 

"O,  that  would  be  really  kind  of  you,  Mr.  Ander- 
sen," she  said. 

The  moment  he  had  gone,  however,  she  felt  an- 
noyed that  she  had  let  him  go.  It  looked  so  odd,  she 
thought,  his  leaving  her  so  suddenly,  directly  Maurice 
came  on  the  scene.  Besides,  what  would  Gladys  say 
at    this    interruption    of    her    pleasure?     She    would 


REPRISALS   FROM   BELOW  41 

suppose  she  had  done  it  out  of  pure  spitefulness! 
The  moments  seemed  very  long  to  her  as  she  waited 
at  the  little  bridge,  tracing  indecipherable  hiero- 
glyphics in  the  dust  with  the  end  of  her  parasol. 
She  kept  her  eyes  steadily  fixed  on  the  tall  retreating 
figure  of  the  stone-cutter  as  he  slouched  with  his  long 
shambling  stride  towards  the  work-shop.  The  two 
men  were  not,  however,  really  long  in  approaching. 
Maurice  had  seen  her  from  the  beginning,  and  his 
replies  to  Mr.  Wone's  oratory  had  grown  propor- 
tionally brief. 

When  they  reached  her,  the  girl  shook  hands  with 
Maurice  and  bowed  rather  coldly  to  Mr.  Wone. 
That  gentleman  was  not  however  in  the  least  quelled 
or  suppressed.  It  was  one  of  his  most  marked 
characteristics  to  have  absolutely  no  consciousness  of 
season  or  situation.  When  less  clever  people  would 
have  wished  the  earth  to  swallow  them  up,  Mr.  Wone 
remained  imperviously  self-satisfied.  Having  ex- 
changed greetings,  Lacrima  hastened  to  explain  that 
she  was  waiting  at  this  spot  till  Miss  Romer  should 
rejoin  her.  "Luke  Andersen  is  showing  her  his 
work,"  she  said,  "and  James  has  gone  to  tell  her  I  am 
waiting." 

Mr.  Wone  became  voluble  at  this.  "It  is  a  shame 
to  keep  a  young  lady  like  yourself  waiting  in  the 
middle  of  the  road."  He  turned  to  Mr.  Quincunx. 
"We  must  not  say  all  we  think,  must  we?  But 
begging  this  young  lady's  pardon,  it  is  just  like  the 
family.  No  consideration!  No  consideration  for 
anyone!  It  is  the  same  with  his  treatment  of  the 
poor.  I  am  talking  of  Mr.  Romer,  you  know.  Miss. 
I  would  say  the  same  thing  to  his  face.     Why  is  it 


42  \YOOD   AND   STONE 

that  hard-working  clever  fellows,  like  these  Andersens 
for  instance,  should  do  all  the  labour,  and  he  get  all 
the  profits?  It  isn't  fair.  It's  unjust.  It's  an  insult 
to  God's  beautiful  earth,  which  is  free  to  all."  He 
paused  to  take  breath,  and  looked  to  Maurice  for 
confirmation  of  his  words. 

"You  are  quite  right,  Wone;  you  are  quite  right," 
muttered  the  recluse  in  his  beard,  furtively  glancing 
at  Lacrima. 

Mr.  Wone  continued  his  discourse,  making  large 
and  eloquent  allusion  to  the  general  relations  in 
England  between  employer  and  employed,  and  im- 
plying plainly  enough  his  full  knowledge  that  at  least 
one  of  his  hearers  belonged  to  the  latter  class.  His 
air,  as  he  spoke,  betrayed  a  certain  disordered  fanati- 
cism, quite  genuine  and  deeply  felt,  but  queerly 
mingled  with  an  indescribable  element  of  complacent 
self-conceit.  Lacrima,  in  spite  of  considerable  sym- 
pathy with  much  that  he  said,  felt  that  there  was,  in 
the  man  himself,  something  so  slipshod,  so  limp,  so 
vague,  and  so  patently  vulgar,  that  both  her  respect 
for  his  sincerity  and  her  interest  in  his  opinions  were 
reduced  to  nothing.  Not  only  was  he  narrow-minded 
and  ignorant;  but  there  was  also  about  him,  in  spite 
of  the  aggressive  violence  of  his  expressions,  an  odd 
sort  of  deprecatory,  apologetic  air,  as  though  he  were 
perpetually  endeavouring  to  cajole  his  audience,  by 
tacit  references  to  his  deferential  respect  for  them. 
There  was  indeed  more  than  a  little  in  him  of  the  sleek 
unction  of  the  nonconformist  preacher;  and  one  could 
well  understand  how  he  might  combine,  precisely  as 
Mr.  Lickwit  suspected,  the  divergent  functions  of  the 
politician  and  the  evangelist. 


REPRISALS  FROM  BELOW  43 

"I  tell  you,"  he  was  saying,  "the  country  will  not 
long  put  up  with  this  sort  of  thing.  There  is  a  move- 
ment, a  tendency,  a  volcanic  upheaval,  a  stirring  of 
waters,  which  these  plutocrats  do  not  realize.  There 
is  a  surging  up  from  the  depths  of  —  of — "  He 
paused  for  a  word. 

"Of  mud,"  murmured  Mr.  Quincunx. 

" — Of  righteous  revolt  against  these  atrocious  in- 
equalities! The  working  people  are  asleep  no  longer. 
They're  roused.  The  movement's  begun.  The  thun- 
der's gathering  on  the  horizon.  The  armies  of  the 
exploited  are  feeling  the  impulse  of  their  own  strength, 
of  that  noble,  that  splendid  anger,  which,  when  it  is 
conceived,  will  bring  forth  —  will  bring  forth — " 

"Damnation,"  murmured  Mr.  Quincunx. 

The  three  figures  as  they  stood,  thus  consorted, 
on  the  little  stone  bridge,  made  up  a  dramatic  group. 
The  sinking  sun  threw  their  shadows  in  long  wavering 
lines  upon  the  white  road,  distorting  them  to  so 
grotesque  a  length  that  they  nearly  reached  the  open 
gates  of  the  station. 

Human  shadows!  What  a  queer  half -mocking  com- 
mentary they  make  upon  the  vanity  of  our  pas- 
sionate excitements,  roused  by  anything,  quieted  by 
nothing,  as  the  world  moves  round! 

Lacrima,  in  her  shadow,  was  not  beautiful  at  all. 
She  was  an  elongated  wisp  of  darkness.  The  beard 
of  Mr.  Quincunx  looked  as  if  it  belonged  to  a  mam- 
moth goat,  and  the  neck  of  Mr.  Wone  seemed  to 
support,  not  a  human  cranium  at  all,  but  a  round, 
wagging  mushroom. 

The  hushed  fields  on  each  side  of  the  way  began  to 
assume    that    magical    softness    which    renders    them. 


44  WOOD  AND   STONE 

at  such  an  hour,  insubstantial,  unreal,  remote,  trans- 
formed. One  felt  as  though  the  earth  might  indeed 
be  worthy  of  better  destinies  than  those  that  traced 
their  fantastic  trails  up  and  down  its  peaceful  surface. 
Something  deeply  withheld,  seemed  as  though  it  only 
needed  the  coming  of  one  god-like  spirit  to  set  it  free 
forever,  and,  with  it,  all  the  troubled  hearts  of  men. 
It  was  one  of  those  moments  which,  whether  the  par- 
ticipants in  them  recognize  them  or  not,  at  the  actual 
time,  are  bound  to  recur,  long  afterwards,  to  their 
memory. 

Lacrima,  half-listening  to  Mr.  Wone,  kept  her  head 
anxiously  turned  in  the  direction  of  the  sheds,  into 
one  of  which  she  had  observed  James  Andersen  enter, 

Maurice  Quincunx,  his  mood  clogged  and  clotted 
by  jealousy,  watched  her  with  great  melancholy  grey 
eyes,  while  with  his  nervous  fingers  he  plucked  at  his 
beard. 

"The  time  is  coming  —  the  time  is  coming";  cried 
Mr.  Wone,  striking  with  the  back  of  his  fist,  the 
parapet  against  which  he  leaned,  "when  this  exploita- 
tion of  the  poor  by  the  rich  will  end  once  for  all!" 
The  warmth  of  his  feeling  was  so  great,  that  large 
drops  of  sweat  trickled  down  his  sallow  cheeks,  and 
hanging  for  a  moment  at  the  end  of  his  narrow  chin, 
fell  into  the  dust.  The  man  was  genuinely  moved; 
though  in  his  watery  blue  eyes  no  trace  of  any  fire 
was  visible.  He  looked,  in  his  emotion,  like  an 
hypnotized  sick  person,  talking  in  the  stress  of  a 
morbid  fever.  It  was  the  revolt  of  one  who  carried 
the  obsequious  slavery  of  generations  in  his  blood, 
and  could  only  rebel  in  galvanized  moribund  spasms. 
The    fellow    was    unpleasing,    uninspiring:     not    the 


REPRISALS   FROM   BELOW  45 

savage  leader  of  a  race  of  stern  revolutionary  devotees 
fired  by  the  iron  logic  of  their  cause,  but  the  inchoate 
inarticulate  voice  of  clumsy  protest,  apologizing  and 
propitiating,  even  while  it  protested.  The  vulgarity 
and  meanness  of  the  candidate's  tone  made  one 
wonder  how  such  a  one  as  he  could  ever  have  been 
selected  by  the  obscure  working  of  the  Spirit  of  Sacri- 
fice, to  undertake  this  titanic  struggle  against  the 
Spirit  of  Power.  One  turned  away  instinctively  from 
his  febrile  rhetoric,  to  cast  involuntary  incense  at  the 
feet  of  the  masterful  enemy  he  opposed.  He  had  no 
reticence  in  his  enthusiasm,  no  reserve,  no  decency. 

"You  may  perhaps  not  know,"  he  blundered  on; 
"that  the  General  Election  is  much  nearer  than  people 
think.  Mr.  Romer  will  find  this  out;  he  will  find  it 
out;  he  will  find  it  out!  I  have  good  authority 
for  what  I  say.  I  speak  of  what  I  know,  young 
lady."  This  was  said  rather  severely,  for  Lacrima's 
attention  was  so  obviously  wandering.  —  "Of  course 
you  will  not  breathe  a  word  of  this,  up  there," 
—  he  nodded  in  the  direction  of  the  House.  "It 
would  not  do.  But  the  truth  is,  he  is  making  a  great 
mistake.  I  am  prepared  for  this  campaign,  and  he 
is  not.  He  is  even  thinking  of  reducing  the  men's 
wages  still  further.  The  fool  —  the  fool  —  the  fool ! 
For  he  is  a  fool,  you  know,  though  he  thinks  he  is  so 
clever." 

Even  Mr.  Wone  would  scarcely  have  dared  to 
utter  these  bold  asseverations  in  the  ear  of  Gladys 
Romer's  cousin,  if  Maurice's  innate  indiscretion  had 
not  made  it  the  gossip  of  the  village  that  the  Italian 
was  ill-treated  "among  those  people."  To  the 
pathetic  man's  poor  vulgar  turn  of  mind  there  was 


46  WOOD  AND   STONE 

something  soothing  in  this  confidential  abuse  of  the 
lord  of  Nevilton  Manor  to  his  own  rehition.  It  had 
a  squalid  piquancy.     It  was  itself  a  sort  of  revenge. 

Once  more  he  began  his  spasmodic  enunciation  of 
those  sad  economic  platitudes  that  are  the  refuge  of 
the  oppressed;  but  Mr,  Quincunx  had  crossed  the 
road,  in  the  pursuit  of  a  decrepit  tiger-moth,  and  was 
listening  no  more.  Lacrima's  attention  was  com- 
pletely withdrawn. 

"Well,  dear  friends,"  he  concluded,  "I  must  really 
be  getting  back  to  my  supper.  Mrs.  Wone  will  be 
unbearable  if  I  am  late."  He  hesitated  a  moment 
as  if  wondering  whether  the  occasion  called  for  any 
further  domestic  jocosity,  to  let  these  high  matters 
lightly  down  to  earth;  but  he  contented  himself  with 
shaking  hands  with  Mr.  Quincunx  and  removing  his 
hat  to  Lacrima. 

"Good  night,  dear  friends,"  he  repeated,  drifting 
off,  up  the  road,  humming  a  hymn  tune. 

"Poor  man!"  whispered  the  girl,  "he  means  well." 

"He  ought  to  be  shot!"  was  the  unexpected  re- 
sponse of  the  hermit  of  Dead  Man's  Cottage,  as  he 
let  the  tiger-moth  flutter  down  into  the  edge  of  the 
field.  "He  is  no  better  than  the  rest.  He  is  an 
idiot.     He  ought  to  learn  Latin." 

They  moved  together  towards  the  station. 

"I  don't  like  the  way  you  agree  with  people  to 
their  face,"  said  Lacrima,  "and  abuse  them  behind 
their  backs." 

"I  don't  like  the  way  you  hang  about  the  roads 
with  handsome  stone-cutters,"  was  Mr.  Quincunx's 
surly  retort. 

Meanwhile,    a    quite    interesting    little    drama    had 


REPRISALS   FROM   BELOW  47 

been  unfolding  itself  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
half-carved  block  of  sandstone.  Instructed,  by  a 
swift  flash  of  perception,  into  what  the  situation 
implied,  Luke's  quick  magnetic  fingers  soon  drew 
from  his  companion's  an  electric  responsive  clasp,  as 
they  leant  together  over  the  mouldings.  The  warmth 
and  pliable  softness  of  the  girl's  body  seemed  to 
challenge  the  man  with  intimations  of  how  quickly  it 
would  yield.  He  pointed  to  the  shed-door,  wide  open 
behind  them. 

"I  will  show  you  my  work,  in  there,  in  a  moment," 
he  murmured,  "as  soon  as  they  have  gone." 

Her  breast  rose  and  fell  under  the  increased  excite- 
ment of  her  breathing.  Violent  quivers  ran  up  and 
down  her  frame  and  communicated  themselves  to 
him.  Their  hearts  beat  fiercely  in  reciprocal  agita- 
tion. Luke's  voice,  as  he  continued  his  conventional 
summary  of  the  quality  and  destination  of  the  stone, 
shook  a  little,  and  sounded  queer  and  detached. 

"It  is  for  Shaftesbury  church,"  he  said,  "for  the 
base  of  the  column  that  supports  the  arch.  This 
particular  moulding  is  one  which  my  father  designed. 
You  must  remember  that  upon  it  will  rest  a  great 
deal  of  the  weight  of  the  roof." 

His  fellow  workmen  had  now  collected  their  tools 
and  were  shufiling  nervously  past  them.  It  required 
all  Gladys'  sang-froid  to  give  them  the  casual  nod  due 
from  the  daughter  of  the  House  to  those  who  laboured 
in  its  service.  As  soon  as  they  were  well  upon  their 
way,  with  a  quick  glance  at  the  distant  figures  of 
Lacrima  and  James,  Gladys  turned  rapidly  to  her 
companion. 

"Show  me,"  she  said. 


48 WOOD   AND   STONE 

He  went  before  her  and  stood  in  the  entrance  of 
the  work-shop.  When  she  had  passed  him  into  its 
interior,  he  casually  closed  behind  them  one  of  the 
rough  folding  doors.  The  contrast  from  the  horizon- 
tal sun  outside,  turning  the  sandstone  blocks  into 
ruddy  gold,  to  the  shadowy  twilight  within,  was 
strangely  emphatic.  He  began  to  speak;  saying  he 
hardly  knew  what  —  some  kind  of  stammered  non- 
sense about  the  bases  and  capitals  and  carved  mould- 
ings that  lay  around  them.  But  Gladys,  true  to  her 
feminine  prerogative,  swept  all  this  aside.  With  a 
bold  audacity  she  began  at  once. 

"How  nice  to  be  alone  and  free,  for  a  little  while!" 

Then,  moving  still  further  into  the  shadow,  and 
standing,  as  if  absorbed  in  interest,  before  the  rough 
beginnings  of  a  fluted  pillar  which  reached  as  high  as 
the  roof  — 

"What  kind  of  top  are  you  going  to  put  on  to  that 
thing?" 

As  she  spoke  she  leant  against  the  pillar  with  a 
soft,  weary  relaxation  of  her  whole  form. 

"Come  near  and  tell  me  about  it,"  she  whispered, 
as  if  her  breath  caught  in  her  throat. 

Luke  recognized  the  tone  —  the  tone  that  said,  so 
much  more  distinctly  than  words,  "I  am  ready. 
Why  are  you  so  slow.''"  He  came  behind  her,  and  as 
gently  and  lightly  as  he  could,  though  his  arms 
trembled,  let  his  fingers  slide  caressingly  round  her 
flexible  figure.  Her  breath  came  in  quick  gasps,  and 
one  hot  small  hand  met  his  own  and  pressed  it  against 
her  side.  Encouraged  by  this  response,  he  boldly 
drew  her  towards  him.  She  struggled  a  little;  a  shy 
girlish    struggle,    more   than    half   conventional  —  and 


REPRISALS  FROM   BELOW  49 

then,  sliding  round  in  his  arms  with  a  quick  feline 
movement,  she  abandoned  herself  to  her  craving,  and 
embraced  him  shamelessly  and  passionately.  When 
at  last  in  sheer  weariness  her  arms  relaxed  and  she 
sank  down,  with  her  hands  pressed  to  her  burning 
cheeks,  upon  an  unfinished  font,  Luke  Andersen 
thought  that  never  to  his  dying  day  would  he  forget 
the  serpentine  clinging  of  that  supple  form  and  the 
pressure  of  those  insatiable  lips.  He  turned,  a  little 
foolishly,  towards  the  door  and  kicked  with  his  foot  a 
fragment  of  a  carved  reredos.  Then  he  went  back  to 
her  and  half-playfully,  half-amorously,  tried  to  remove 
her  hands  from  her  face. 

"Don't  touch  me!     I  hate  you!"  she  said. 

"Please,"  he  whispered,  "please  don't  be  unkind  now. 
I  shall  never,  never  forget  how  sweet  you've  been." 

"Tell  me  more  about  this  work  of  yours,"  she 
suddenly  remarked,  in  a  completely  changed  voice, 
rising  to  her  feet.  "I  have  always  understood  that 
you  were  one  of  our  best  workmen.  I  shall  tell  my 
father  how  highly  I  think  of  what  you're  doing  — 
you  and  your  brother.  I  am  sure  he  will  be  glad  to 
know  what  artists  he  has  among  his  men." 

She  gave  her  head  a  proud  little  toss  and  raised 
negligent  deliberate  hands  to  her  disarranged  fair 
hair,  smoothing  it  down  and  readjusting  her  wide- 
brimmed  hat.  She  had  become  the  grand  lady  again 
and  Luke  had  become  the  ordinary  young  stone- 
mason. Superficially,  and  with  a  charming  grace,  he 
adapted  himself  to  this  change,  continuing  his  con- 
ventional remarks  about  fonts,  pillars,  crosses,  and 
capitals;  and  calling  her  "Miss"  or  "Miss  Gladys," 
with  scrupulous  discretion.     But  in  his  heart,  all  the 


50 ^YOOD  AND   STONE 

while,  he  was  registering  a  deep  and  vindictive  vow^  — 
a  vow  that,  at  whatever  risk  and  at  whatever  cost, 
he  would  make  this  fair  young  despot  suffer  for  her 
caprice.  Gladys  had  indeed,  quite  unwittingly, 
entered  into  a  struggle  with  a  nature  as  remorseless 
and  unscrupulous  as  her  own.  She  had  dreamed,  in 
her  imperial  way,  of  using  this  boy  for  her  amuse- 
ment, and  then  throwing  him  aside.  She  did  not  for 
a  moment  intend  to  get  entangled  in  any  sentimental 
relations  with  him.  A  passing  "amour,"  leading  to 
nothing,  and  in  no  way  committing  her,  was  what  she 
had  instinctively  counted  on.  For  the  rest,  in  snatch- 
ing fiercely  at  any  pleasure  her  fervent  senses  craved, 
she  was  as  conscienceless  and  antinomian,  as  a  young 
tiger  out  of  the  jungle.  Nor  had  she  the  remotest 
sense  of  danger  in  this  exciting  sport.  Corrupt  and 
insensitive  as  any  amorous  courtezan  of  a  pagan  age, 
she  trusted  to  her  freedom  from  innocence  to  assure 
her  of  freedom  from  disaster.  Vaguely  enough  in 
her  own  mind  she  had  assumed,  as  these  masterful 
"blond  beasts"  are  inclined  to  assume,  that  in 
pouncing  on  this  new  prey  she  was  only  dealing  once 
more  with  that  malleable  and  timorous  humanity  she 
had  found  so  easy  to  mould  to  her  purpose  in  other 
quarters.  She  reckoned,  with  a  pathetic  simplicity, 
that  Luke  would  be  clay  in  her  hands.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  this  spoiled  child  of  the  wealth  produced  by 
the  Leonian  stone  had  audaciously  flung  down  her 
challenge  to  one  who  had  as  much  in  him  as  herself 
of  that  stone's  tenacity  and  imperviousness.  The 
daughter  of  sandstone  met  the  carver  of  sandstone; 
and  none,  who  knew  the  two,  would  have  dared  to 
predict  the  issue  of  such  an  encounter. 


REPRISALS  FROM  BELOW  51 

The  young  man  was  still  urbanely  and  discreetly 
discoursing  to  his  lady-visitor  upon  the  contents  of 
the  work-shop,  when  the  tall  figure  of  James  Andersen 
darkened  the  door. 

"Excuse  me,  Miss,"  he  said  to  Gladys,  "but  Miss 
Lacrima  asked  me  to  tell  you  that  she  was  waiting 
for  you  on  the  bridge." 

"Thank  you,  James,"  answered  the  girl  simply, 
"I  will  come.  I  am  afraid  my  interest  in  all  the 
things  your  brother  has  been  so  kindly  showing  me 
has  made  you  both  late.  I  am  sorry."  Here  she 
actually  went  so  far  as  to  fumble  in  her  skirt  for  her 
purse.  After  an  awkward  pause,  during  which  the 
two  men  waited  at  either  side  of  the  door,  she 
found  what  she  sought,  and  tripping  lightly  by, 
turned  as  she  passed  Luke  and  placed  in  his  hand, 
the  hand  that  so  recently  had  been  clasped  about  her 
person,  the  insolent  recompense  of  a  piece  of  silver. 
Bidding  them  both  good-night,  she  hurried  away 
to  rejoin  Lacrima,  who,  having  by  this  time  got  rid 
of  Mr.  Quincunx,  moved  down  the  road  to  meet 
her. 

Luke  closed  and  locked  the  door  of  the  shed  without 
a  word.  Then  to  the  astonishment  of  James  Ander- 
sen he  proceeded  to  dance  a  kind  of  grotesque  war- 
dance,  ending  it  with  a  suppressed  half-mocking 
howl,  as  he  leant  exhausted  against  the  wall  of  the 
building. 

"I've  got  her,  I've  got  her,  I've  got  her!"  he 
repeated.  "James,  my  darling  Daddy  James,  I've  got 
this  girl  in  the  palm  of  my  hand!"  He  humorously 
proceeded  to  toss  the  coin  she  had  given  him  high  in 
the  air.     "Heads  or  tails.?"  he  cried,  as  the  thing  fell 


52 WOOD  AND   STONE 

among  the  weeds.  "Heads!  It's  heads,  my  boy! 
That  means  that  Miss  Gladys  Romer  will  be  sorry 
she  ever  stepped  inside  this  work-shop  of  ours.  Come, 
let's  wash  and  eat,  my  brother;  for  the  gods  have 
been  good  to  us  today.'* 


CHAPTER   V 
FRANCIS    TAXATER 

THE  day  following  the  one  whose  persuasive 
influence  we  have  just  recorded  was  not 
less  auspicious.  The  weather  seemed  to  have 
effected  a  transference  of  its  accustomed  quality, 
bringing  to  the  banks  of  the  Yeo  and  the  Parret  the 
atmospheric  conditions  belonging  to  those  of  the 
Loire  or  the  Arno. 

Having  finished  her  tea  Valentia  Seldom  was  stroll- 
ing meditatively  up  and  down  the  vicarage  terrace, 
alternately  stopping  to  pick  off  the  petals  of  a  dead 
flower,  or  to  gaze,  with  a  little  gloomy  frown,  upon 
the  grass  of  the  orchard. 

Her  slender  upright  figure,  in  her  black  silk  dress, 
made  a  fine  contrast  to  the  rich  green  foliage  about 
her,  set  on  one  side  with  ruby-coloured  roses  and  on 
the  other  with  yellow  buttercups.  But  the  old  lady 
was  in  no  peaceful  frame  of  mind.  Every  now  and 
then  she  tapped  the  gravel  impatiently  with  her 
ebony  stick;  and  the  hand  that  toyed  with  the 
trinkets  at  her  side  mechanically  closed  and  unclosed 
its  fingers  under  the  wrist-band  of  Mechlin  lace.  It 
was  with  something  of  an  irritable  start,  that  she 
turned  round  to  greet  Francis  Taxater,  as  led  by  the 
little  servant  he  presented  himself  to  her  attention. 
He  moved  to  greet  her  with  his  usual  imperturbable 
gravity,  walking  sedately  along  the  edge  of  the  flowery 


54  WOOD   AXD   STONE 

border;     with   one   shoulder   a   little   higher   than   the 
other  and  his  eyes  on  the  ground. 

His  formidable  prelatical  chin  seemed  more  than 
ever  firmly  set  that  afternoon,  and  his  grey  waist- 
coat, under  his  shabby  black  coat,  was  tightly  drawn 
across  his  emphatic  stomach.  His  coal-black  eyes, 
darkened  yet  further  by  the  shadow  of  his  hat, 
glanced  furtively  to  right  and  left  of  him  as  he  ad- 
vanced. In  the  manner  peculiar  to  persons  disciplined 
by  Catholic  self-control,  his  head  never  followed,  by 
the  least  movement,  the  shrewd  explorations  of  these 
diplomatic  eyes. 

One  would  have  taken  him  for  a  French  bishop,  of 
aristocratic  race,  masquerading,  for  purposes  of  dis- 
cretion, in  the  dress  of  a  secular  scholar. 

Everything  about  Francis  Taxater,  from  the  noble 
intellectual  contours  of  his  forehead,  down  to  his 
small  satyr-like  feet,  smacked  of  the  courtier  and  the 
priest;  of  the  learned  student,  and  the  urbane  fre- 
quenter of  sacred  conclaves.  His  small  white  hand, 
plump  and  exquisitely  shaped,  rested  heavily  on  his 
cane.  He  carried  with  him  in  every  movement  and 
gesture  that  curious  air  of  dramatic  weight  and  im- 
portance which  men  of  diplomatic  experience  are 
alone  able  to  use  without  letting  it  degenerate  into 
mannerism.  It  was  obvious  that  he,  at  any  rate, 
according  to  Mr.  Quincunx's  favourite  discrimination, 
"knew  Latin."  He  seemed  to  have  slid,  as  it  were, 
into  this  commercial  modern  world,  from  among  the 
contemporaries  of  Bossuet.  One  felt  that  his  authors 
were  not  Ibsen  or  Tolstoy,  but  Horace  and  Cicero. 

One  felt  also,  however,  that  in  sheer  psychological 
astuteness  not  even  Mr.  Romer  himself  would  be  a 


FRANCIS  TAXATER 55 

match  for  him.  Between  those  two,  the  man  of 
modern  wisdom  and  the  man  of  ancient  wisdom,  any 
struggle  that  might  chance  to  occur  would  be  a  singu- 
larly curious  one.  If  Mr.  Taxater  really  was  "on  the 
side  of  the  angels,"  he  was  certainly  there  with  the 
full  weight  of  organized  hierarchies.  If  he  did  exert 
his  strength  upon  the  side  of  "meekness,"  it  would 
be  a  strength  of  no  feverish,  spasmodic  eruption. 

If  Satan  threw  a  Borgia  in  Mr.  Taxater's  path, 
that  Borgia,  it  appeared,  would  find  his  Machiavel. 

"Yes,  it  is  a  lovely  day  again,"  said  the  old  lady, 
leading  her  visitor  to  a  seat  and  placing  herself  by  his 
side.  "But  what  is  our  naughty  Monsignor  doing, 
playing  truant  from  his  consistory?  I  thought  you 
would  be  in  London  this  week  —  at  the  Eucharist 
Conference  your  people  are  holding?  Is  it  to  the 
loveliness  of  the  weather  that  we  owe  this  pleasant 
surprise?" 

One  almost  expected  —  so  formal  and  old-fashioned 
were  the  two  interlocutors  —  that  Mr.  Taxater  would 
have  replied,  in  the  tone  of  Ivanhoe  or  the  Talisman, 
"A  truce  to  such  jesting.  Madam!"  No  doubt  if  he 
had,  the  lady  would  hardly  have  discerned  any 
anachronism.  As  a  matter  of  fact  he  did  not  answer 
her  question  at  all,  but  substituted  one  of  his  own. 

"I  met  Vennie  in  the  village,"  he  said.  "Do  you 
think  she  is  happier  now,  in  her  new  English  circle?" 

"Ah!  my  friend,"  cried  the  old  lady,  in  a  nervous 
voice,  "it  is  of  Vennie  that  I  have  been  thinking  all 
this  afternoon.  No,  I  cannot  say  I  think  she  is  hap- 
pier. I  wonder  if  it  is  one  thing;  and  then  I  wonder 
if  it  is  another.  I  cannot  get  to  the  bottom  of  it  and 
it  worries  me." 


56  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"I  expect  it  is  her  nerves,"  said  the  diplomatist. 
"Though  the  sun  is  so  warm,  there  has  been  a  con- 
stant east  wind  lately;  and,  as  you  know,  I  put  down 
most  of  our  agitations  to  the  presence  of  east  wind." 

"It  will  not  do,  Mr.  Taxater;  it  will  not  do!  It 
may  be  the  east  wind  with  you  and  me.  It  is  not 
the  east  wind  with  Vennie.  Something  is  troubling 
her.     I  wish  I  could  discern  what  it  is?" 

"She  isn't  by  any  chance  being  vexed  by  some 
theological  dispute  with  the  Vicar,  is  she.'^  I  know 
how  seriously  she  takes  all  his  views.  And  his  views 
are,  if  I  may  say  so,  decidedly  confusing.  Don't 
misunderstand  me,  dear  lady.  I  respect  Mr.  Clavering 
and  admire  him.  I  like  the  shape  of  his  head;  es- 
pecially when  he  wears  his  beretta.  But  I  cannot 
feel  much  confidence  in  his  wisdom  in  dealing  with  a 
sensitive  child  like  your  daughter.  He  is  too  im- 
pulsive. He  is  too  dogmatic.  He  lives  too  entirely 
in  the  world  of  doctrinal  controversy.  It  is  danger- 
ous"; here  Mr.  Taxater  luxuriously  stretched  out  his 
legs  and  lit  a  cigarette;  "it  is  dangerous  to  live  only 
for  theology.  We  have  to  learn  to  live  for  Religion; 
and  that  is  a  much  more  elaborate  affair.  That 
extends  very  far,  Mrs.  Seldom."  The  old  lady  let 
her  stick  slide  to  the  ground  and  clasped  her  hands 
together.  "I  want  to  ask  you  one  thing,  Mr.  Taxater. 
And  I  implore  you  to  be  quite  direct  with  me.  You 
do  not  think,  do  you,  that  my  girl  is  tending  towards 
your  church  —  towards  Rome.'*  I  confess  it  would 
be  a  heavy  blow  to  me,  one  of  the  heaviest  I  have 
ever  had,  if  anything  of  that  kind  happened.  I  know 
you  are  tolerant  enough  to  let  me  speak  like  this 
without    scruple.      I    like    you,    my    dear    friend  — " 


FRANCIS  TAXATER  57 

Here  a  soft  flush  spread  over  Valentia's  ivory-coloured 
cheeks  and  she  made  a  little  movement  as  if  to  put 
her  hand  on  her  companion's  arm.  "I  Uke  you 
yourself,  and  have  the  utmost  confidence  in  you.  But 
Oh,  it  would  be  a  terrible  shock  to  me  if  Vennie  became 
a  Roman  Catholic.  She  would  enter  a  convent;  I 
know  she  would  enter  a  convent  and  that  would  be 
more  than  I  could  bear."  The  accumulated  distress 
of  many  years  was  in  the  old  lady's  voice  and  tears 
stood  in  her  eyes.  "I  know  it  is  silly,"  she  went  on 
as  Mr.  Taxater  steadily  regarded  the  landscape. 
"  But  I  cannot  help  it.  I  do  so  hope  —  Oh,  I  can't  tell 
you  how  much  —  that  Vennie  will  marry  and  have 
children.  It  is  the  secret  burden  of  my  life,  the 
thought  that,  with  this  frail  little  thing,  our  ancient 
race  should  disappear.  I  feel  it  my  deepest  duty  — 
my  duty  to  the  Past  and  my  duty  to  the  Future  — 
to  arrange  a  happy  marriage  for  her.  If  only  that 
could  be  achieved,  I  should  be  able  to  die  content." 

"You  have  no  evidence,  no  authority  for  thinking," 
said  Mr.  Taxater  gravely,  "that  she  is  meditating 
any  approach  to  my  church,  as  you  call  it,  have  you  ?  " 

"Oh  no!"  cried  the  old  lady,  "quite  the  contrary. 
She  seems  absorbed  in  the  services  here.  She  works 
with  Mr.  Clavering,  she  discusses  everything  with 
Mr.  Clavering,  she  helps  Mr.  Clavering  with  the  poor. 
I  believe"  —  here  Valentia  lowered  her  voice;  "I 
believe  she  confesses  to  Mr.  Clavering." 

Francis  Taxater  smiled  —  the  smile  of  the  heir  of 
Christendom's  classic  faith  at  these  pathetic  fumblings 
of  heresy  —  and  carefully  knocked  the  ashes  from  his 
cigarette  against  the  handle  of  his  cane. 

"You   don't   think,   dear   lady,"    he   said,   "that   by 


58  WOOD   AND   STONE 

any  chance  —  girls  are  curiously  subtle  in  these  little 
things  —  she  is  'in  love,'  as  they  call  it,  with  our 
nice  handsome  Vicar?" 

Valentia  gave  an  involuntary  little  start.  In  her 
heart  there  rose  up  the  shadow  of  a  shadow  of  ques- 
tioning, whether  in  this  last  remark  the  great  secular 
diplomatist  had  not  lapsed  into  something  approach- 
ing a  "faux  pas." 

"Certainly  not,"  she  answered.  "Vennie  is  not  a 
girl  to  mix  up  her  religion  with  things  of  that  sort." 

Francis  Taxater  permitted  the  flicker  of  a  smile  to 
cross  his  face.  He  slightly  protruded  his  lower  lip 
which  gave  his  countenance  a  rather  sinister  expres- 
sion. His  look  said,  more  clearly  than  words,  that  in 
his  opinion  there  was  no  woman  on  earth  who  did 
not  "mix  up  these  things"  with  her  religion. 

"I  have  not  yet  made  my  request  to  you,"  con- 
tinued the  old  lady,  with  a  certain  nervous  hesitation. 
"I  am  so  afraid  lest  you  should  think  it  an  evidence 
of  a  lack  of  confidence.  It  isn't  so!  It  really  isn't 
so.  I  only  do  it  to  relieve  my  mind;  —  to  make  my 
food  taste  better,  if  you  understand.''  —  and  to  stop 
this  throbbing  in  my  head."  She  paused  for  a  mo- 
ment, and  picking  up  her  stick,  prodded  the  gravel 
with  it,  with  lowered  face.  The  voices  of  not  less 
than  three  wood-pigeons  were  audible  from  the 
apple-orchard.  And  this  soft  accompaniment  to  her 
words  seemed  to  give  her  courage.  Fate  could  not, 
surely,  altogether  betray  her  prayers,  in  a  place  so 
brooded  over  by  "the  wings  of  the  dove."  In  the 
exquisite  hush  of  the  afternoon  the  birds'  rich  voices 
seemed  to  take  an  almost  liturgical  tone  —  as  though 
they   were  the   ministers   of   a   great   natural   temple. 


FRANCIS  TAXATER  59 

To  make  a  solemn  request  of  a  dear  friend  under  such 
conditions  was  almost  as  though  one  were  exacting 
a  sacred  vow  under  the  very  shadow  of  the  altar. 

So  at  least  Valentia  felt,  as  she  uttered  her  serious 
petition;  though  it  may  well  be  that  Mr.  Taxater, 
skilled  in  the  mental  discipline  of  Saint  Ignatius,  knew 
better  how  to  keep  the  distracting  influences  of  mere 
"Nature,"  in  their  proper  secondary  place. 

"I  want  you  faithfully  to  promise  me,"  she  said, 
"that  you  will  in  no  way  —  in  no  way  at  all  —  use 
your  influence  over  Vennie  to  draw  her  from  her 
English  faith."  The  old  lady's  voice  became  quite 
husky  in  her  emotion.  "It  would  be  dreadful  to  me 
to  think,  —  I  could  not  bear  to  think  "  —  she  went 
on,  "that  you  should  in  the  smallest  degree  use  your 
great  powers  of  mind  to  disturb  the  child's  present 
attitude.  If  she  is  not  happy,  it  is  not — Oh,  I  assure 
you,  it  is  not — in  any  sense  due  to  her  being  dis- 
satisfied with  her  religion.  It  must  be  something 
quite  different.  What  it  is,  I  cannot  guess;  but  it 
must  be  something  quite  different  from  that.  Well, 
dear  friend,"  and  she  did  now,  quite  definitely,  lay 
her  hand  on  his  arm,  "will  you  promise  this  for  me? 
You  will.''     I  know  you  will." 

Francis  Taxater  rose  from  his  seat  and  stood  over 
her  very  gravely,  leaning  upon  his  cane. 

"You  have  done  well  to  tell  me  this,  Mrs.  Seldom," 
he  said.  "Most  certainly  I  shall  make  no  attempt  to 
influence  Vennie.  It  would  be  indeed  contrary  to  all 
that  I  regard  as  wise  and  suitable  in  the  relations 
between  us.  I  never  convert  people.  I  believe  you 
will  find  that  very  few  of  those  who  are  born  Catho- 
lics ever  interfere  in  that  way.     It  is  the  impetuosity 


60  WOOD  AND   STONE 

of  new-comers  into  the  church  that  gives  us  this 
bad  name.  They  often  carry  into  their  new  faith 
the  turbulent  theological  zeal  which  distinguished 
them  in  their  old  one.  I,  at  any  rate,  am  not  like 
that.  I  leave  people  alone.  I  prefer  to  watch  them 
develop  on  their  own  lines.  The  last  thing  I  should 
wish  to  do  would  be  to  meddle  with  Vennie's  religious 
taste.  It  would  be  a  blunder  as  well  as  an  imperti- 
nence. Vennie  would  be  the  first  to  resist  any  such 
proceeding.  It  would  destroy  her  respect  for  me.  It 
might  even  destroy  her  affection  for  me.  It  certainly 
would  not  move  her.  Indeed,  dear  lady,  if  I  wished 
to  plant  the  child's  soul  irrevocably  in  the  soil  pre- 
pared by  our  good  vicar  I  could  not  do  anything 
more  effective  than  try  to  persuade  her  of  its  de- 
ficiencies. No,  no!  You  may  rely  upon  me  to  stand 
completely  aside  in  this  matter.  If  Vennie  were  led 
to  join  us  —  which  for  your  sake,  dear  Mrs.  Sel- 
dom, I  hope  will  never  happen, —  you  may  accept 
my  word  of  honour  it  will  be  from  her  own  spon- 
taneous impulse.  I  shall  make  not  the  least  move- 
ment in  the  direction  you  fear.  That  I  can  devoutly 
promise." 

He  turned  away  his  head  and  regarded  with  calm, 
placid  detachment  the  rich,  shadowy  orchard  and 
the  golden  buttercups. 

The  contours  of  his  profile  were  so  noble,  and  the 
pose  of  his  head  so  majestic,  that  the  agitated  mother 
was  soothed  and  awed  into  complete  confidence. 

"Thank  God!"  she  exclaimed.  "That  fear,  at  any 
rate,  has  passed.  I  shall  be  grateful  to  you  forever, 
dear  friend,  for  what  you  have  just  now  said.  It  is 
a  direct  answer  to  my  prayers." 


FRANCIS  TAXATER  61 

"May  I,  in  my  turn,"  said  Mr.  Taxater,  resuming 
his  seat  by  her  side,  "ask  you  a  bold  and  uncalled 
for  question?  What  would  you  do,  if  in  the  changes 
and  chances  of  this  life,  Vennie  did  come  to  regard 
Mr.  Clavering  with  favour?  Would  you  for  a  mo- 
ment consider  their  union  as  a  possible  one?" 

Valentia  looked  not  a  little  embarrassed.  Once 
more,  in  her  heart,  she  accused  the  urbane  scholar 
of  a  lack  of  delicacy  and  discretion.  These  little 
questions  are  not  the  ones  to  put  to  a  perturbed 
mother. 

However,  she  answered  him  plainly  enough.  "I 
should  not  like  it,  I  confess.  It  would  disappoint 
me.  I  am  not  ambitious,  but  sometimes  I  catch 
myself  desiring,  for  my  beloved  child,  a  marriage  that 
would  give  her  the  position  she  deserves,  the  position 
—  pardon  a  woman's  weakness,  sir!  —  that  her  an- 
cestors held  in  this  place.  But  then,  again,  I  am 
only  anxious  for  her  happiness.  No,  Mr.  Taxater. 
If  such  a  thing  did  occur  I  should  not  oppose  it, 
Mr.  Clavering  is  a  gentleman,  though  a  poor  one  and, 
in  a  sense,  an  eccentric  one.  But  I  have  no  predju- 
dice  against  the  marriage  of  our  clergy.  In  fact  I 
think  they  ought  to  marry.  It  is  so  suitable,  you 
know,  to  have  a  sensible  woman  endowed  with  such 
opportunities  for  making  her  influence  felt.  I  would 
not  wish  Vennie  to  marry  beneath  her,  but  sooner 
than  not  see  her  married  —  well !  —  That  is  the 
kind  of  feeling  I  have  about  it,  Mr.  Taxater." 

"Thank  you  —  thank  you.  I  fear  my  question 
was  impertinent;  but  in  return  for  the  solemn  oath 
you  exacted  from  me,  I  think  I  deserved  some  re- 
ward,   don't    you?     But    seriously,     Mrs.    Seldom,    I 


62  WOOD  AND   STONE 

do  not  think  that  any  of  these  less  desirable  fates 
will  befall  our  dear  child.  I  think  she  will  marry  a 
pillar  of  the  aristocracy,  and  remain  herself  a  pillar 
of  the  Anglican  Church!  I  trust  she  will  not,  what- 
ever happens,  lose  her  regard  for  her  old  Catholic 
friend." 

He  rose  as  he  spoke  and  held  out  his  hand.  Mrs. 
Seldom  took  it  in  her  own  and  held  it  for  a  moment 
with  some  emotion.  Had  he  been  a  real  Monsignor, 
he  could  not  have  looked  more  calm,  more  tolerant, 
more  kind,  than  he  looked  at  that  moment.  He 
wore  the  expression  that  high  ecclesiastics  must  come 
to  wear,  when  devoted  but  somewhat  troublesome 
daughters  of  the  church  press  close  to  kiss  the  ame- 
thystine ring. 

A  few  minutes  later  he  was  passing  out  of  the 
vicarage  gate.  The  new  brood  of  warblers  that 
flitted  about  the  tall  bushes  at  that  spot  heard  — 
with  perfect  unconcern  —  a  mysterious  Latin  quota- 
tion issue  from  that  restrained  mouth.  They  could 
hardly  be  blamed  for  not  understanding,  even  though 
they  had  migrated  to  these  fields  of  heresy  from  more 
classic  places,  that  the  plain  English  interpretation 
of  the  dark  saying  was  that  all  things  are  lawful  to 
him  whose  motive  is  the  "Potestas  Civitatis  Dei!" 

He  crossed  the  dusty  road  and  was  proceeding 
towards  his  own  house,  which  was  hardly  more  than 
a  hundred  yards  away,  when  he  saw  through  a  wide 
gap  in  the  hedge  a  pleasant  and  familiar  sight.  It 
was  a  hay-field,  in  the  final  stage  of  its  "making," 
surrendering  to  a  great  loose  stack,  built  up  beneath 
enormous  elm-trees,  the  last  windrows  of  its  sweet- 
scented  harvest. 


FRANCIS  TAXATER  63 

Pausing  for  a  moment  to  observe  more  closely  this 
pleasant  scene  —  for  hay-making  in  Dorsal  Field 
amounted  to  a  village  ritual  —  Mr.  Taxater  became 
aware  that  among  the  figures  scattered  in  groups 
about  the  meadow  were  the  very  two  whose  relation 
to  one  another  he  had  just  been  discussing.  Vennie 
and  the  young  clergyman  were  engaged  in  an  ani- 
mated conversation  with  three  of  the  farm-boys. 

Mr.  Taxater  at  once  climbed  through  the  gap,  and 
crossing  the  field  approached  the  group  unobserved. 
It  was  not  till  he  was  quite  close  that  Vennie  caught 
sight  of  him.  Her  pale,  pinched  little  face,  under  its 
large  hat,  flushed  slightly  as  she  held  out  her  hand; 
but  her  great  steady  grey  eyes  were  full  of  friendly 
welcome. 

Mr.  Clavering  too  was  effusive  and  demonstrative 
in  his  greeting.  They  chatted  a  little  of  indifferent 
matters,  and  the  theologian  was  introduced  to  the 
shy  farm-boys,  who  stared  at  him  in  rustic  wonder. 

Then  Hugh  Clavering  said,  "If  you'll  pardon  me 
for  a  moment,  I  think  I  ought  to  go  across  and  speak 
to  John  Goring,"  and  he  indicated  the  farmer's 
figure  bending  over  a  new  gleaning-machine,  at  the 
opposite  end  of  the  field.  "Don't  go  away,  please, 
Mr.  Taxater,  till  I  come  back.  You  will  keep  him, 
won't  you,  Miss  Seldom?" 

He  strode  off;  and  the  boys  drifted  away  after 
him,  leaving  Mr.  Taxater  and  the  girl  together, 
under  the  unfinished  hay-stack.  "I  was  so  much 
wanting  to  speak  to  you,"  began  Vennie  at  once. 
"I  very  nearly  ran  in  to  the  Gables;  but  I  saw  Mrs. 
Watnot  over  the  wall,  and  she  told  me  you  were 
out.      I   am   in   serious   need   of   advice   upon    a   thing 


64  WOOD  AND   STONE 

that  is  troubling  me,  and  you  are  the  only  person 
who  can  really  help." 

The  expression  of  Mr.  Taxater's  face  at  that  mo- 
ment was  so  sympathetic,  and  yet  so  grave,  that  one 
would  hardly  have  been  surprised  to  hear  him  utter 
the  conventional  formula  of  a  priest  awaiting  con- 
fession. Though  unuttered,  the  sacred  formula  must 
have  been  telepathically  communicated,  for  Vennie 
continued  without  a  pause,  holding  her  hands  behind 
her  back,  and  looking  on  the  ground.  "Ever  since 
our  last  serious  conversation  —  do  you  remember.'*  — 
after  Easter,  I  have  been  thinking  so  much  about 
that  phrase  of  yours,  referring  to  the  Pope,  as  the 
eternal  living  defender  of  the  idea  of  Love  as  the 
secret  of  the  universe.  Mr.  Clavering  talks  to 
me  about  love  —  you  know  what  I  mean,"  she  smiled 
and  blushed  prettily,  with  a  quick  lifting  of  her  head, 
"  but  he  never  gives  me  the  feeling  of  something  real 
and  actual  which  we  can  approach  on  earth  —  some- 
thing personal,  I  mean.  And  I  have  been  feeling  so 
much  lately  that  this  is  what  I  want.  Mr.  Clavering 
is  very  gentle  with  me  when  I  try  to  explain  my 
difficulties  to  him;  but  I  don't  think  he  really  under- 
stands. The  way  he  talks  is  beautiful  and  inspiring 
—  but  it  somehow  sounds  like  poetry.  It  does  not 
give  me  anything  to  lay  hands  on."  And  she  looked 
into  Mr.  Taxater's  face  with  a  pathetic  wide-eyed 
appeal,  as  if  he  were  able  to  call  down  angels  from 
heaven. 

"Dear  child,"  said  the  diplomatist,  "I  know  only 
too  well  what  you  mean.  Yes,  that  is  the  unfortu- 
nate and  necessary  limitation  of  a  heretical  church. 
It  can  only  offer  mystic  and  poetic  consolations.     It 


FRANCIS   TAXATER  65 


has  lost  touch  with  the  one  true  Vine,  and  conse- 
quently the  full  stream  of  life-giving  sap  cannot  flow 
through  its  veins." 

"But  I  have  felt  so  strengthened,"  said  Vennie 
mournfully,  "by  the  sacrament  in  our  Church;  so 
strengthened  and  inspired!  It  seems  dreadful  that 
it  should  all  be  a  sort  of  mockery." 

"Do  not  speak  like  that,  dear  child,"  said  Mr. 
Taxater.  "God  is  good;  and  in  his  knowledge  of 
our  weakness  he  permits  us  to  taste  of  his  mystery 
even  in  forbidden  cups.  The  motive  in  your  heart, 
the  faith  in  your  soul,  have  been  pure;  and  God  has 
given  to  them  some  measure,  though  but  an  imper- 
fect one,  of  what  he  will  grant  to  your  complete 
obedience." 

Vennie  bent  down  and  picking  up  a  swathe  of 
sweet-scented  hay  twisted  it  thoughtfully  in  her 
fingers.  "God  has  indeed  been  working  miracles  on 
your  behalf,"  continued  Mr.  Taxater.  "It  must  have 
been  your  guardian  angel  that  led  me  to  speak  to 
you  as  I  did  at  that  time.  For  in  future,  I  regret 
to  say,  I  shall  be  less  free.  But  the  good  work  has 
been  done.  The  seed  has  been  sown.  What  follows 
must  be  at  your  own  initiative." 

Vennie  looked  at  him,  puzzled,  and  rather  alarmed. 
"Why  do  you  say  you  will  be  less  free?  Are  we 
going  to  have  no  more  lovely  conversations  at  the 
bottom  of  our  orchard.''  Are  you  going  to  be  too 
busy  to  see  me  at  alW 

Mr.  Taxater  smiled.  "Oh  no,  it  isn't  as  bad  as 
that,"  he  said.  "It  is  only  that  I  have  just  faith- 
fully promised  your  mother  not  to  convert  you  to 
Catholicism." 


66  WOOD   AND   STOXE 

"Mother  had  no  right  to  make  you  give  any  such 
promise,"  cried  the  girl  indignantly. 

"No,"  responded  the  diplomatist,  "she  had  no 
such  right.  No  one  has  a  right  to  demand  promises 
of  that  kind.  It  is  one  of  the  worst  and  subtlest 
forms  of  persecution." 

"But  you  did  not  promise?  You  surely  did  not 
promise.'*" 

"There  was  no  escaping  it,"  replied  Mr.  Taxater. 
"If  I  had  not  done  so  she  would  have  given  you  no 
peace,  and  your  future  movements  would  have  been 
mercilessly  watched.  However,"  he  went  on,  smil- 
ingly, "a  promise  exacted  under  that  kind  of  com- 
pulsion must  be  interpreted  in  a  very  large  and 
liberal  way.  Relatively  I  must  avoid  discussing 
these  things  with  you.  In  a  higher  and  more  abso- 
lute sense  we  will  combine  our  thoughts  about  them, 
day  and  night,  until  we  worship  at  the  same  altar." 

Vennie  was  silent.  The  noble  and  exalted  sophistry 
of  the  subtle  scholar  puzzled  and  bewildered  her. 
"But  I  have  no  idea  of  what  to  do  next,"  she  pro- 
tested. "I  know  no  Catholics  but  you.  I  should 
feel  very  nervous  on  going  to  the  priest  in  Yeobor- 
ough.  Besides,  I  don't  at  all  like  the  look  of  him. 
And  the  people  here  say  he  is  often  drunk.  You 
wouldn't  send  me  to  a  man  like  that,  would  you.'' 
Oh,  I  feel  so  angry  with  mother!  She  had  no  right 
to  go  to  you  behind  my  back." 

Francis  Taxater  laid  his  hand  gently  on  the  girl's 
shoulder.  "There  is  no  reason  for  haste,"  he  said. 
"There  is  no  cause  to  agitate  yourself.  Just  remain 
quietly  as  you  are.  Say  nothing  to  your  mother. 
It    would    only    cause    her    unnecessary    distress.     I 


FRANCIS  TAXATER  67 

never  promised  not  to  lend  you  books.  All  my 
shelves  are  at  your  service.  Read,  my  dear  Vennie, 
read  and  think.  My  books  will  supply  the  place  of 
my  words.  Indeed,  they  will  serve  the  purpose  much 
better.  In  this  way  we  shall  at  once  be  obeying 
your  earthly  mother,  and  not  disobeying  your  heav- 
enly mother,  who  is  now  —  Ave  Maria  gratiae  plena ! 
—  drawing  you  so  strongly  towards  her." 

"Shall  I  say  anything  to  Mr.  Clavering?" 

"Not  a  word!  not  a  word!  And  enter  as  little  as 
possible  into  argument  with  him.  If  he  fancies,  from 
your  silence,  that  he  has  quelled  your  doubts,  let 
him  fancy  so.  The  mistake  will  be  due  to  his  own 
pride  and  not  to  any  deception.  It  is  wrong  to  lie  — 
but  we  are  not  called  upon  to  dispel  illusions  arising 
from  the  self-conceit  of  others." 

"But  you  —  will  —  think  —  of  me?"  pleaded  Httle 
Vennie.  "I  may  know  that  you  have  not  deserted 
me?     That  you  are  always  ready  —  always  there?" 

Mr.  Taxater  smiled  benignly.  "Of  course  I  shall 
be  ready,  dear  child.  And  you  must  be  ready.  That 
is  why  I  only  ask  you  to  read  and  think.  God  will 
answer  your  prayers  if  you  show  patience.  He  has 
taught  his  church  never  to  clamour  for  hurried  con- 
versions. But  to  wait,  with  all  her  reservoirs  of  mys- 
teries, till  they  come  to  her  of  their  own  accord. 
You  will  come,  Vennie,  you  will  come!  But  it  will  be 
in  God's  hour  and  not  in  ours." 

Vennie  Seldom  thanked  him  with  a  timid  glance  of 
infinite  gratitude  and  confidence.  A  soft  luminous 
happiness  suffused  her  being,  into  which  the  scents 
and  sounds  of  that  felicitous  hour  poured  their  offer- 
ings of  subtle  contentment.     In  after  years,  in  strange 


68 WOOD   AND   STONE 

and  remote  places,  she  never  forgot  the  high  thriUing 
exultation,  calm,  yet  passionate  as  an  indrawn  wave, 
of  that  unrecurring  moment. 

The  security  that  filled  her  passed,  indeed,  only 
too  quickly  away.  Her  face  clouded  and  a  little  anx- 
ious frown  puckered  her  narrow  white  forehead. 

"There  is  something  else  I  wanted  to  ask  you," 
she  said  hurriedly,  "and  I  must  say  it  quickly  be- 
cause I  am  afraid  of  Mr.  Clavering  coming  back. 
It  has  to  do  with  Mr.  Clavering.  I  do  not  think 
you  realize  what  influence  you  have  over  people, 
what  powerful  influence!  Mr.  Clavering  adores  you. 
He  would  do  anything  for  you.  He  respects  you  as  a 
thinker.  He  venerates  you  as  a  good  man.  Now, 
Mr.  Taxater,  please,  please,  use  you  influence  with 
him  to  save  him  —  to  save  him — "  She  stopped 
abruptly,  and  a  flood  of  colour  rushed  to  her  cheeks. 

"To  save  him  from  what,  dear  child?  I  am  afraid 
there  is  no  hope  of  Mr.  Clavering  coming  to  our 
way  of  thinking." 

"It  isn't  that,  Mr.  Taxater!  Its  something  else;  — 
something  to  do  with  his  own  happiness,  with  his 
own  life.  Oh,  it  is  so  hard  for  me  to  tell  you!"  She 
clenched  her  hands  tightly  together  and  looked 
steadily  away  from  him  as  she  spoke.  "It  is  that 
that  dreadful  Gladys  Romer  has  been  plaguing  him 
so  —  tempting  him  to  flirt  with  her,  to  be  silly  about 
her,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing.  He  does  not  really 
like  her  at  all.  That  I  know.  But  he  is  passionate 
and  excitable,  and  easily  led  away  by  a  girl  like  that. 
Oh,  it  all  sounds  so  absurd,  as  I  say  it,"  cried  poor 
Vennie,  with  cheeks  that  were  by  this  time  flaming, 
"but    it's  much,   much   more    serious    than    it    sounds. 


FRANCIS  TAXATER  69 

You  see,  I  know  Mr.  Clavering  very  well.  I  know 
how  simple  and  pure-minded  he  is.  And  I  know  how 
desperately  he  prays  against  being  led  away  —  like 
this.  Gladys  does  not  care  for  him  really  a  bit. 
She  only  does  it  to  amuse  herself;  to  satisfy  her 
wicked,  wicked  nature!  She  would  like  to  lead  him  as 
far  as  she  possibly  could,  and  then  to  turn  upon 
him  and  make  him  thoroughly  miserable.  She  is 
the  kind  of  girl  —  Oh  what  am  I  saying  to  you,  Mr. 
Taxater?  —  that  men  always  are  attracted  by.  Some 
men  I  believe  would  even  call  her  beautiful.  I  don't 
think  she's  that  at  all.  I  think  she  is  gross,  fleshly, 
and  horrid!  But  I  know  what  a  danger  she  is  to 
Mr.  Clavering.  I  know  the  dreadful  struggle  that 
goes  on  in  his  mind;  and  the  horrible  temptation  she 
is  to  him.  I  know  that  after  seeing  her  he  always 
suffers  the  most  cruel  remorse.  Now,  Mr.  Taxater, 
use  your  influence  to  strengthen  him  against  this 
girl's  treachery.  She  only  means  him  harm,  I  know 
she  does!  And  if  a  person  like  you,  whom  he  loves 
and  admires  so  much,  talked  to  him  seriously  about 
it,  it  would  be  such  a  help  to  him.  He  is  so  young. 
He  is  a  mere  boy,  and  absolutely  ignorant  of  the 
world.  He  does  not  even  realize  that  the  village  has 
already  begun  its  horrid  gossip  about  them.  Do  — 
do,  do  something,  Mr.  Taxater.  It  is  like  that  young 
Parsifal,  in  the  play,  being  tempted  by  the  en- 
chantress." 

"But  how  do  they  meet?"  asked  the  diplomatist, 
with  unchanged  gravity.  "I  do  not  see  how  they 
are  ever  alone  together." 

"She  has  arranged  it.  She  is  so  clever;  the  bad, 
bad  girl!     She  goes  to  him  for    confirmation  lessons. 


70  ^YOOD   AND   STONE 

He  teaches  her  in  his  study  twice  a  week  —  separately 
from  the  others." 

"But  her  father  is  a  Unitarian." 

"That  does  not  interfere.  She  does  what  she  likes 
with  Mr.  Romer.  Her  game  now  is  to  want  to  be 
baptized  into  our  church.  She  is  going  to  be  baptized 
first,  and  then  confirmed." 

"And  the  preparation  for  baptism  is  as  dangerous 
as  the  preparation  for  confirmation."  remarked  the 
scholar;  straightening  the  muscles  of  his  mouth,  after 
the  discipline  of  St.  Ignatius. 

"The  whole  thing  is  horrible  —  dreadful!  It  frets 
me  every  hour  of  the  day.  He  is  so  good  and  so 
innocent.     He  has  no  idea  where  she  is  leading  him." 

"But  I  cannot  prevent  her  wanting  to  be  bap- 
tized," said  Mr.  Taxater. 

"You  can  talk  to  him,"  answered  Vennie,  with 
intense  conviction.  "You  can  talk  to  him  and  he 
will  listen  to  you.  You  can  tell  him  the  danger  he 
is  in  of  being  made  miserable  for  life."  She  drew  her 
breath  deeply.  "Oh the  remorse  he  will  feel;  the 
horrible,  horrible  remorse!" 

Mr.  Taxater  glanced  across  the  hay-field.  The  sun, 
a  red  globe  of  fire,  was  resting  on  the  extreme  edge 
of  Leo's  Hill,  and  seemed  like  a  great  blood-shot 
eye  regarding  them  with  lurid  interest.  Long  cool 
shadows,  thrown  across  the  field  by  the  elms  in  the 
hedge  and  by  the  stack  beside  them,  melted  magically 
into  one  another,  and  made  the  hillocks  of  still  un- 
gathered  grass  soft  and  intangible  as  fairy  graves. 

"I  will  do  my  best,"  said  the  scholar.  "I  will  do 
my  best."  And  indicating  to  Vennie,  who  was  ab- 
sorbed   in  her  nervous  gratitude,   the  near  approach 


FRANCIS  TAXATER 71 

of  the  object  of  their  saintly  conspiracy,  he  led  her 
forward  to  meet  the  young  clergyman  with  an  appro- 
priate air  of  friendly  and  casual  nonchalance. 

"I  am  sorry  to  have  to  say  it,"  was  Mr.  Clavering's 
greeting,  "but  that  farmer-fellow  is  the  only  person  in 
my  parish  for  whom  I  have  a  complete  detestation. 
I  wish  to  goodness  Mr.  Romer  had  never  brought 
him  into  the  place!" 

"I  don't  like  the  look  of  his  back,  I  must  say," 
answered  the  theologian,  following  with  his  eyes  the 
retreating  figure  of  Mr.  John  Goring. 

"He  is,"  said  the  young  priest,  "without  exception 
the  most  repulsive  human  being  I  have  ever  met  in 
my  life.  Our  worthy  Romer  is  an  angel  of  light 
compared  with  him." 

With  Mr.  Goring  still  as  their  topic,  they  strolled 
amicably  together  towards  the  same  gap  in  the  hedge, 
through  which  the  apologist  of  the  papacy  had 
emerged  an  hour  before.  There  they  separated; 
Vennie  returning  to  the  vicarage,  and  the  young 
clergyman  carrying  off  Mr.  Taxater  to  supper  with 
him  in  his  house  by  the  church. 

Clavering's  establishment  consisted  of  a  middle- 
aged  woman  of  inordinate  volubility,  and  the  woman's 
daughter,  a  girl  of  twelve. 

The  supper  offered  by  the  priest  to  his  guest  was 
"light  and  choice"  —  nor  did  it  lack  its  mellow 
accompaniment  of  carefully  selected,  if  not  "Attic," 
wine.  Of  this  wine  Mr.  Taxater  did  not  hesitate  to 
partake  freely,  sitting,  when  the  meal  was  over, 
opposite  his  host  at  the  open  window,  through  which 
the  pleasant  murmurs  of  the  evening,  and  the  voices  of 
the  village-street,  soothingly  and  harmoniously  floated. 


72  WOOD   AND   STONE 

The  famous  theologian  was  in  an  excellent  temper. 
Rich  recondite  jests  pursued  one  another  from  his 
smiling  lips,  and  his  white  hands  folded  themselves 
complacently  above  the  cross  on  his  watch-chain. 

Lottie  Fringe,  the  child  of  Clavering's  servant, 
tripped  sportively  in  and  out  of  the  room,  encouraged 
in  her  girlish  coquetries  by  the  amiable  scholar. 
She  was  not  yet  too  old  to  be  the  kittenish  plaything 
of  the  lighter  moments  of  a  wise  and  scholarly  man, 
and  it  was  pleasant  to  watch  the  zest  with  which  the 
vicar's  visitor  entered  into  her  sportive  audacities. 
Mr.  Taxater  made  her  fill  and  refill  his  glass,  and 
taking  her  playfully  on  his  knee,  kissed  her  and 
fondled  her  many  times.  It  was  the  vicar  himself, 
who  finally,  a  little  embarrassed  by  these  levities,  sent 
the  girl  off  to  the  kitchen,  apologizing  to  his  guest  for 
the  freedom  she  displayed. 

"Do  not  apologize,  dear  Mr.  Clavering,"  said  the 
theologian.  "I  love  all  children,  especially  when  they 
are  girls.  There  is  something  about  the  kisses  of  a 
young  girl  —  at  once  amorous  and  innocent  —  which 
reconciles  one  to  the  universe,  and  keeps  death  at  a 
distance.  Could  one  for  a  moment  think  of  death, 
when  holding  a  young  thing,  so  full  of  life  and  beauty, 
on  one's  knee.''" 

The  young  priest's  face  clouded.  "To  be  quite 
honest  with  you,  Mr.  Taxater,"  he  murmured,  in 
a  troubled  voice,  "I  cannot  say  that  I  altogether 
agree.  We  are  both  unconventional  people,  so  I  may 
speak  freely.  I  do  not  think  that  one  does  a  child 
any  good  by  encouraging  her  to  be  playful  and 
forward,  in  that  particular  wa^'.  You  live  with  your 
books;     but    I    live    with     my    people,    and    I    have 


FRANCIS  TAXATER  73 

known  so  many  sad  cases  of  girls  being  completely 
ruined  by  getting  a  premature  taste  for  coquetry  of 
that  kind." 

"I  am  afraid,  my  friend,"  answered  Mr.  Taxater, 
"that  the  worst  of  all  heresies  is  lodged  deep  in  your 
heart." 

"Heresies.?  God  knows,"  sighed  the  priest,  "I 
have  enough  evil  in  my  heart  —  but  heresies?  I  am 
at  a  loss  to  catch  your  meaning." 

In  the  absence  of  his  playful  Clerica  —  to  use  the 
Pantagruelian  allusion  —  the  great  Homenas  of  Nevil- 
ton  was  compelled  to  fill  his  "tall-boy  of  extravagant 
wine"  with  his  own  hand.  He  did  so,  and  continued 
his  explanation. 

"By  the  worst  of  all  heresies  I  mean  the  dangerous 
Puritan  idea  that  pleasure  itself  is  evil  and  a  thing 
detestable  to  God.  The  Catholic  doctrine,  as  I 
understand  it,  is  that  all  these  things  are  entirely 
relative  to  the  persons  concerned.  Pleasure  in  itself 
is,  in  the  Aristotelian  sense,  a  supreme  good.  Every- 
one has  a  right  to  it.  Everyone  must  have  it.  The 
whole  thing  is  a  matter  of  proportion  and  expediency. 
If  an  innocent  playful  game,  of  the  kind  you  have 
just  witnessed,  was  likely  in  this  definite  particular 
case  to  lead  to  harm,  then  you  would  be  justified  in 
your  anxiety.  But  there  must  be  no  laying  down  of 
hard  general  rules.  There  must  be  no  making  a 
virtue  of  the  mere  denying  ourselves  pleasure." 

Mr.  Clavering  could  hardly  wait  for  his  guest  to 
finish. 

"Then,  according  to  your  theory,"  he  exclaimed, 
"it  would  be  right  for  you,  or  whoever  you  will,  — 
pardon  my  making  the  thing  so  personal  —  to  indulge 


74  WOOD  AND   STONE 

in  casual  levities  with  any  pretty  barmaid,  as  long  as 
you  vaguely  surmised  that  she  was  a  sensible  girl  and 
would  not  be  harmed?" 

"Certainly  it  would  be  right,"  replied  the  papal 
apologist,  sipping  his  wine  and  inhaling  the  perfume 
of  the  garden,  "and  not  only  right,  but  a  plain  duty. 
It  is  our  duty,  Mr.  Clavering,  to  make  the  world 
happier  while  we  live  in  it;  and  the  way  to  make 
girls  happier,  especially  when  their  occupations  are 
laborious,  is  to  kiss  them;  to  give  them  innocent  and 
admiring  embraces." 

"I  am  afraid  you  are  not  quite  serious,  Mr.  Taxa- 
ter,"  said  the  clergyman.  "I  have  an  absurd  way  of 
being  direct  and  literal  in  these  discussions." 

"Certainly,  I  am  serious.  Do  you  not  know  — 
young  puritan  —  that  some  of  the  noblest  spirits  in 
history  have  not  hesitated  to  increase  the  pleasure  of 
girls'  lives  by  giving  them  frequent  kisses?  In  the 
Greek  days  he  who  could  give  the  most  charming  kiss 
was  awarded  a  public  prize.  In  the  Elizabethan  days 
all  the  great  and  heroic  souls,  whose  exquisite  wit 
and  passionate  imagination  put  us  still  to  shame, 
held  large  and  liberal  views  on  this  matter.  In  the 
eighteenth  century  the  courtly  and  moral  Joseph 
Addison  used  never  to  leave  a  coffee-house,  however 
humble  and  poor,  without  bestowing  a  friendly 
embrace  upon  every  woman  in  it.  The  religious 
Doctor  Johnson  —  a  man  of  your  own  faith  —  was 
notoriously  in  the  habit  of  taking  his  prettier  visitors 
upon  his  knee,  and  tenderly  kissing  them.  It  is  no 
doubt  due  to  this  fact,  that  the  great  lexicographer 
was  so  frequently  visited;  —  especially  by  young 
Quakers.     When  we  come  to  our  own  age,  it  is  well 


FRANCIS  TAXATER  75 

known  that  the  late  Archbishop  Taraton,  the  refuter 
of  Darwin,  was  never  so  happy  as  when  romping 
round  the  raspberry-canes  in  his  garden  with  a  crowd 
of  playful  girls. 

"These  great  and  wise  men  have  all  recognized  the 
fact  that  pleasure  is  not  an  evil  but  a  good.  A  good, 
however,  that  must  be  used  discreetly  and  according 
to  the  Christian  self-control  of  which  God  has  given 
his  Church  the  secret.  The  senses  are  not  under  a 
curse,  Mr.  Clavering.  They  are  not  given  us  simply 
to  tempt  and  perplex  us.  They  are  given  for  our 
wise  and  moderate  enjoyment." 

Francis  Taxater  once  more  lifted  his  glass  to  his 
lips. 

"To  the  devil  with  this  Protestant  Puritanism  of 
yours!  It  has  darkened  the  sun  in  heaven.  It  is 
the  cause  of  all  the  squalid  vice  and  gross  excesses 
of  our  forlorn  England.  It  is  the  cause  of  the 
deplorable  perversities  that  one  sees  around  one.  It 
is  the  cause  of  that  odious  hypocrisy  that  makes 
us  the  laughing-stock  of  the  great  civilized  nations 
of  France,  Italy  and  Spain."  The  theologian  drew 
a  deep  breath,  and  continued.  "I  notice,  Mr. 
Clavering,  that  you  have  by  your  side,  still  unfin- 
ished, your  second  glass  of  wine.  That  is  a  mis- 
take. That  is  an  insult  to  Providence.  Whatever 
may  be  your  attitude  towards  these  butterfly-wenches, 
it  cannot,  as  a  matter  of  poetic  economy,  be  right 
to  leave  a  wine,  as  delicate,  as  delicious  as  this,  to 
spoil  in  the  glass. 

"  I  suppose  it  has  never  occurred  to  you,  Mr.  Claver- 
ing, to  go  and  sit,  with  the  more  interesting  of  your 
flock,    at   the    Seldom    Arms.''     It   never   has?     So    I 


76  WOOD  AND   STONE 

imagined  from  my  knowledge  of  your  uncivilized 
English  ways. 

"The  European  caf6,  sir,  is  the  universal  school 
of  refined  and  intellectual  pleasure.  It  was  from 
his  seat  in  a  Roman  cafe  —  a  place  not  unknown  to 
me  myself  —  that  the  great  Gibbon  was  accustomed 
to  survey  the  summer  moon,  rising  above  the 
Pantheon. 

"  It  is  the  same  in  the  matter  of  wine  as  in  the  other 
matter.  It  is  your  hypocritical  and  puritanical  fear 
of  pleasure  that  leads  to  the  gross  imbibing  of  villain- 
ous spirits  and  the  subterranean  slavery  of  prostitu- 
tion. If  you  allowed  yourselves,  freely,  naturally,  and 
with  Christian  moderation,  to  enjoy  the  admirable 
gifts  of  the  supreme  giver,  there  w'ould  no  longer  be 
any  need  for  this  deplorable  plunging  into  insane  vice. 
As  it  is  —  in  this  appalling  country  of  yours  —  one 
can  understand  every  form  of  debauchery." 

At  this  point  Mr.  Clavering  intervened  with  an 
eager  and  passionate  question.  He  had  been  listening 
intently  to  his  visitor's  words,  and  his  clear-cut,  mobile 
face  had  changed  its  expression  more  than  once  during 
this  long  discourse. 

"You  do  not,  then,  think,"  said  he,  in  a  tone  of 
something  like  supplication,  "that  there  is  anything 
wrong  in  giving  ourselves  up  to  the  intense  emotion 
which  the  presence  of  beauty  and  charm  is  able  to 
excite?" 

"Wrong?"  said  Mr.  Taxater.  "It  is  wrong  to 
suppress  such  feelings!  It  is  all  a  matter  of  propor- 
tion, my  good  sir,  a  matter  of  proportion  and  com- 
mon sense.  A  little  psychological  insight  will  soon 
make  us  aware  whether  the  emotion  you  speak  of  is 


FRANCIS  TAXATER  77 

likely  to  prove  injurious  to  the  object  of  our  admira- 
tion." 

"But  oneself  —  what  about  oneself?"  cried  the 
young  priest.  "Is  there  not  a  terrible  danger,  in  all 
these  things,  lest  one's  spiritual  ideal  should  become 
blurred  and  blighted.'*" 

To  this  question  Mr.  Taxater  returned  an  answer 
so  formidable  and  final,  that  the  conversation  was 
brought  to  an  abrupt  close. 

"What,"  he  said,  "has  God  given  us  the  Blessed 
Sacraments  for?" 

Hugh  Clavering  escorted  his  visitor  to  the  corner  of 
the  street  and  bade  him  good-night  there.  As  he 
re-entered  his  little  garden,  he  turned  for  a  moment  to 
look  at  the  slender  tower  of  St.  Catharine's  church, 
rising  calm  and  still  into  the  hot  June  sky.  Between 
him  and  it,  flitted  like  the  ghost  of  a  dead  Thais  or 
Phryne,  the  pallid  shadow  of  an  impassioned  tempt- 
ress holding  out  provocative  arms.  The  form  of  the 
figure  seemed  woven  of  all  the  vapours  of  unbridled 
poetic  fantasy,  but  the  heavy  yellow  hair  which  most 
of  all  hid  the  tower  from  his  view  was  the  hair  of 
Gladys  Romer. 

The  apologist  of  the  papacy  strolled  slowly  and 
meditatively  back  to  his  own  house  with  the  easy 
step  of  one  who  was  in  complete  harmony  both  wdth 
gods  and  men.  Above  him  the  early  stars  began,  one 
by  one,  to  shine  down  upon  the  earth,  but  as  he 
glanced  up  towards  them,  removing  his  hat  and 
passing  his  hand  across  his  forehead,  the  great 
diplomatist  appeared  quite  untroubled  by  the  ineffable 
littleness  of  all  earthly  considerations,  under  the  re- 
moteness of  those  austere  watchers. 


78  WOOD  AND   STOXE 

The  barking  of  dogs,  in  distant  unknown  yards, 
the  melancholy  cry  of  new-shorn  lambs,  somewhere 
far  across  the  pastures,  the  soft,  low,  intermittent 
breathing,  full  of  whispers  and  odours,  of  the  whole 
mysterious  night,  seemed  only  to  throw  Mr.  Taxater 
back  more  completely  and  securely  upon  that  firm 
ecclesiastical  tradition  which  takes  the  hearts  of  men 
in  its  hands  and  turns  them  away  from  the  Outer 
Darkness. 

He  let  himself  quietly  into  the  Gables  garden,  by 
the  little  gate  in  the  wall,  and  entered  his  house. 
He  was  surprised  to  find  the  door  unlocked  and 
a  light  burning  in  the  kitchen.  The  careful  Mrs. 
Wotnot  was  accustomed  to  retire  to  rest  at  a  much 
earlier  hour.  He  found  the  good  woman  extended  at 
full  length  upon  three  hard  chairs,  her  head  supported 
by  a  bundle  of  shawls.  She  was  suffering  from  one 
of  her  chronic  rheumatic  attacks,  and  was  in  consider- 
able distress. 

To  a  less  equable  and  humane  spirit  there  might 
have  been  something  rather  irritating  than  pathetic 
about  this  unexpected  finale  to  a  harmonious  day. 
But  Mr.  Taxater's  face  expressed  no  sign  of  any  feel- 
ing but  that  of  grave  and  gentle  concern. 

With  some  difficulty,  for  the  muscles  of  her  body 
were  twisted  by  nervous  spasms,  the  theologian  sup- 
ported the  old  woman  up  the  stairs,  to  her  room 
under  the  eaves.  Here  he  laid  her  upon  the  bed,  and 
for  the  rest  of  the  night  refused  to  leave  her  room, 
rubbing  with  his  white  plump  hands  her  thin  old 
legs,  and  applj'ing  brandy  to  her  lips  at  the  moments 
when  the  nervous  contractions  that  assailed  her 
seemed    most   extreme.     The   delicate   light   of   dawn 


FRANCIS  TAXATER 79 

showed  its  soft  bluish  pcallour  at  the  small  casemented 
window  before  the  old  lady  fell  asleep;  but  it  was 
not  till  relieved  by  a  woman  who  appeared,  several 
hours  later,  with  their  morning's  milk,  that  the 
defender  of  the  Catholic  Faith  in  Nevilton  retired  to 
his  well-earned  repose. 


CHAPTER   VI 

THE  PARIAHS 

MR.  QUINCUNX  was  digging  in  his  garden. 
The  wind,  a  little  stronger  than  on  the 
previous  days  and  still  blowing  from  the 
east,  buffeted  his  attenuated  figure  and  ruffled  his 
pointed  beard,  tinged  with  premature  grey.  He  dug 
up  all  manner  of  weeds,  some  large,  some  small,  and 
shaking  them  carefully  free  of  the  adhesive  earth, 
flung  them  into  a  wheel-barrow  by  his  side. 

It  was  approaching  noon,  and  in  spite  of  the  chilly 
gusts  of  wind,  the  sun  beat  down  hotly  upon  the 
exposed  front  of  Dead  Man's  Cottage.  Every  now 
and  then  Mr.  Quincunx  would  leave  his  work;  and 
retiring  into  his  kitchen,  proceed  with  elaborate 
nicety  to  stir  a  small  pot  of  broth  which  simmered 
over  the  fire.  He  was  a  queer  mixture  of  epicurean 
preciseness  and  ascetic  indifference  in  these  matters, 
but,  on  the  whole,  the  epicurean  tendency  predomi- 
nated, owing  to  a  subtle  poetic  passion  in  the  eccentric 
man,  for  the  symbolic  charm  of  all  these  little  neces- 
sities of  life.  The  lighting  of  his  fire  in  the  morning, 
the  crackling  of  the  burning  sticks,  and  their  fragrant 
smell,  gave  Mr.  Quincunx  probably  as  much  pleasure 
as  anything  else  in  the  world. 

Every  bowl  of  that  fresh  milk  and  brown  bread, 
which,    prepared    with    meticulous    care,   formed   his 


THE   PARIAHS  81 

staple  diet,  was  enjoyed  by  him  with  more  cere- 
monious concentration  than  most  gourmands  devote 
to  their  daintiest   meat  and  wine. 

The  broiling  of  his  chicken  on  Sunday  was  a 
function  of  solemn  ritual.  Mr.  Quincunx  bent  over 
the  bird,  basting  it  with  butter,  in  the  absorbed 
manner    of    a    priest    preparing    the    sacrament. 

The  digging  up  of  onions  or  lettuces  in  his  garden, 
and  the  stripping  them  of  their  outer  leaves,  was  a 
ceremony  to  be  performed  in  no  light  or  casual  haste, 
but  with  a  prepared  and  concentrated  spirit. 

No  profane  hand  ever  touched  the  little  canister  of 
tea  from  which  Mr.  Quincunx,  at  the  same  precise 
hour  every  day,  replenished  his  tea-pot. 

In  all  these  material  things  his  scrupulous  and  punc- 
tilious nicety  never  suffered  the  smallest  diminution. 
His  mind  might  be  agitated  to  a  point  bordering  upon 
despair,  but  he  still,  with  mechanical  foresight,  sawed 
the  fagots  in  his  wood-shed  and  drew  the  water  from 
his  well. 

As  he  pulled  up  weed  after  weed,  on  this  particular 
morning,  his  mind  was  in  a  state  of  extreme  nervous 
agitation.  Mr.  Romer  had  called  him  up  the  night 
before  to  the  House,  and  had  announced  that  his 
present  income  —  the  sum  regarded  by  the  recluse  as 
absolutely  secure  —  was  now  entirely  to  cease,  and 
in  the  place  of  it  he  was  destined  to  receive,  in  return 
for  horrible  clerical  work  performed  in  Yeoborough, 
a  considerably  smaller  sum,  as  Mr.  Romer's  paid 
dependent. 

The  idea  of  working  in  an  office  was  more  distaste- 
ful to  Mr.  Quincunx  than  it  is  possible  to  indicate  to 
any  person  not   actually   acquainted   with   him.     His 


82 WOOD   AND   STONE 

exquisitely  characteristic  hand,  admirably  adapted  to 
the  meticulous  diary  he  had  kept  for  years,  was 
entirely  unsuited  to  competing  with  type-writing 
machines  and  machine-like  type-writers.  The  walk 
to  Yeoborough  too,  —  a  matter  of  some  four  or  five 
miles  —  loomed  upon  him  as  a  hideous  purgatory. 
^Yalking  tired  him  much  more  than  working  in  his 
garden;  and  he  had  a  nervous  dread  of  those  casual 
encounters  and  salutations  on  the  way,  which  the 
habitual  use  of  the  same  road  to  one's  work  neces- 
sarily must  imply. 

His  mind  anticipated  with  hideous  minuteness 
every  detail  of  his  future  dreary  life.  He  de- 
cided that  even  at  the  cost  of  the  sacrifice  of  the 
last  of  his  little  luxuries  he  would  make  a  point  of 
going  one  way  at  least  by  train.  That  walk,  twice  a 
day,  through  the  depressing  suburbs  of  Yeoborough 
was  more  than  he  could  bear  to  contemplate.  It  was 
characteristic  of  him  that  he  never  for  a  moment 
considered  the  possibility  of  an  appeal  to  law. 
Law  and  lawyers  were  for  Mr.  Quincunx,  with  his 
instincts  of  an  amiable  anarchist,  simply  the  engines 
through  which  the  rich  and  powerful  worked  their 
will  upon  the  weak  and  helpless. 

It  was  equally  characteristic  of  him  that  it  never 
entered  his  head  to  throw  up  his  cottage,  pack  his 
scanty  possessions  and  seek  his  fortune  in  another 
place.  It  was  not  only  Lacrima  that  held  him  from 
such  a  resolution.  It  was  as  impossible  for  him  to 
think  of  striking  out  in  a  new  soil  as  it  would  have 
been  for  an  aged  frog  to  leave  the  pond  of  its  nativity 
and  sally  forth  across  the  fields  in  search  of  new 
waters.     It   was   this   inability    to    "strike   out"    and 


THE   PARIAHS 83 

grapple  with  the  world  on  equal  terms,  that  had 
led,  in  the  beginning,  to  his  curious  relation  to  the 
Romers.  He  clung  to  Susan  Romer  for  no  other 
reason  than  that  she  supplied  a  link  between  his 
past  and  his  present. 

His  lips  trembled  with  anger  and  his  hand  shook, 
as  he  recalled  the  interview  of  the  preceding  night. 
The  wife  had  annoyed  him  almost  more  than  the 
husband.  His  brutality  had  been  gross  and  frank. 
The  lascivious  joy  of  a  strong  nature,  in  deliberately 
outraging  a  weaker  one,  had  gleamed  forth  from  his 
jeering  eyes. 

But  there  had  been  an  unction,  an  hypocritical 
sentimentality,  about  Mrs.  Romer's  tone,  that  had 
made  him  hate  her  the  more  bitterly  of  the  two.  The 
fact  that  she  also  —  stupid  lump  of  fawning  obesity 
as  she  was!  —  was  a  victim  of  this  imperial  tyrant, 
did  not  in  the  least  assuage  him.  The  helot  who  is 
under  the  lash  hates  the  helot  who  crouches  by  the 
master's  chair,  more  deeply  than  he  hates  the  master. 
It  is  because  of  this  unhappy  law  of  nature  that  there 
are  so  few  successful  revolts  among  our  social  Pariahs. 
The  well-constituted  ruler  of  men  divides  his  serfs 
into  those  who  hold  the  whip  and  those  who  are 
whipped.  Yes,  he  hated  her  the  most.  But  how  he 
hated  them  both! 

The  heart  of  your  true  Pariah  is  a  strange  and 
dark  place,  concealing  depths  of  rancorous  animosity, 
which  those  who  over-ride  and  discount  such  feelings 
rarely  calculate  upon.  It  is  a  mistake  to  assume  that 
this  curious  role  —  the  role  of  being  a  Pariah  upon 
our  planet  —  is  one  confined  to  the  submerged,  the 
outcast,    the   criminal. 


84 WOOD  AND   STOXE 

There  are  Pariahs  in  every  village.  It  might  be 
said  that  there  are  Pariahs  in  every  family.  The 
Pariah  is  one  who  is  born  with  an  innate  inability 
to  deal  vigorously  and  effectively  with  his  fellow 
animals.  One  sees  these  unfortunates  every  day  — 
on  the  street,  in  the  office,  at  the  domestic  hearth. 
One  knows  them  by  the  queer  look  in  their  eyes; 
the  look  of  animals  who  have  been  crushed  rather 
than  tamed. 

It  is  not  only  that  they  are  weaker  than  the  rest 
and  less  effectual.  They  are  different.  It  is  in  their 
difference  that  the  tragedy  of  their  fate  lies.  Com- 
monplace weaklings,  who  are  not  born  Pariahs,  have 
in  their  hearts  the  same  standards,  the  same  ambi- 
tions, the  same  prejudices,  as  those  who  rule  the 
world.  Such  weaklings  venerate,  admire,  and  even 
love  the  strong  unscrupulous  hands,  the  crafty  un- 
scrupulous brains,  who  push  them  to  and  fro  like 
pawns. 

But  the  Pariah  does  not  venerate  the  Power 
that  oppresses  him.  He  despises  it  and  hates  it. 
Long-accumulated  loathing  rankles  in  his  heart.  He 
is  crushed  but  not  won.  He  is  penned,  like  a  shorn 
sheep;    but  his  thoughts  "wander  through  Eternity." 

And  it  is  this  difference,  separating  him  from  the 
rest,  that  excites  such  fury  in  those  who  oppress  him. 
The  healthy-minded  prosperous  man  is  irritated  be- 
yond endurance  by  this  stranger  within  the  gate  — 
this  incorrigible,  ineffectual  critic,  cumbering  his  road. 
The  mob,  too,  always  ready,  like  spiteful,  cawing 
rooks,  to  fall  upon  a  wounded  comrade,  howl  re- 
morselessly for  his  destruction.  The  Pariah  is  seldom 
able  to  retain  the  sweetness  of  his  natural  affections. 


THE   PARIAHS  85 

Buffetted  by  the  unconscious  brutality  of  those 
about  him,  he  retorts  with  conscious  and  unfathom- 
able hatred.  His  soul  festers  and  gangrenes  within 
him,  and  the  loneliness  of  his  place  among  his  fel- 
lows leads  him  to  turn  upon  them  all  —  like  a  rat  in 
a  gin.  The  pure-minded  capable  man,  perceiving 
the  rancorous  misanthropy  of  this  sick  spirit,  longs 
to  trample  him  into  the  mud,  to  obliterate  him,  to 
forget  him.  But  the  man  whose  strength  and  cun- 
ning is  associated  with  lascivious  perversity,  wishes 
to  have  him  by  his  side,  to  humiliate,  to  degrade,  to 
outrage.  A  taste  to  be  surrounded  by  Pariahs  is  an 
interesting  peculiarity  of  a  certain  successful  class. 
Such  companionship  is  to  them  a  perpetual  and 
pleasing  reminder  of  their  own  power. 

Mr.  Quincunx  was  a  true  Pariah  in  his  miserable 
combination  of  inability  to  strike  back  at  the  people 
who  injured  him,  and  inability  to  forget  their  injuries. 
He  propitiated  their  tastes,  bent  to  their  will,  con- 
ciliated their  pride,  agreed  with  their  opinions,  and 
hated  them  with  demoniacal  hatred. 

As  he  pulled  up  his  weeds  in  the  hot  sun,  this 
particular  morning,  Maurice  Quincunx  fantastically 
consoled  himself  by  imagining  all  manner  of  disasters 
to  his  enemies.  Every  time  he  touched  with  his 
hands  the  soft-crumbling  earth,  he  uttered  a  kind  of 
half-conscious  prayer  that,  in  precisely  such  a  way, 
the  foundations  of  Nevilton  House  should  crumble  and 
yield.  Under  his  hat  —  for  he  was  hypochondriacally 
apprehensive  about  sunstrokes  —  flapped  and  waved 
in  the  wind  a  large  cabbage  leaf,  placed  carefully  at 
the  back  of  his  head  to  protect  his  neck  as  he  bent 
down.     The  shadow  of  this  cabbage  leaf,  as  it  was 


86  AYOOD  AND   STONE 

thrown  across  the  dusty  path,  assumed  singular  and 
sinister  shapes,  giving  the  impression  sometimes  that 
the  head  of  Mr.  Quincunx  was  gnome-like  or  goblin- 
like in  its  proportions. 

Perhaps  the  most  unfortunate  characteristic  of 
Pariahs  is  that  though  they  cling  instinctively  to  one 
another  they  are  irritated  and  provoked  by  each 
other's   peculiarities. 

This  unhappy  tendency  was  now  to  receive  sad 
confirmation  in  our  weed-puller's  case,  for  he  was 
suddenly  interrupted  by  the  appearance  at  his  gate 
of  Lacrima  Traffio. 

He  rose  to  meet  her,  and  without  inviting  her  to 
pass  the  entrance,  for  he  was  extremely  nervous  of 
village  gossip,  and  one  never  knew  what  a  casual 
passer-by  might  think,  he  leant  over  the  low  wall 
and  talked  with  her  from  that  security. 

She  seemed  in  a  very  depressed  and  pitiable  mood 
and  the  large  dark  eyes  that  fixed  themselves  upon 
her  friend's  face  were  full  of  an  inarticulate  appeal. 

"I  cannot  endure  it  much  longer,"  she  said.  "It 
gets  worse  and  worse  every  day." 

Maurice  Quincunx  knew  perfectly  well  what  she 
meant,  but  the  curious  irritation  to  which  I  have  just 
referred  drove  him  to  rejoin: 

"What  gets  worse.''" 

"Their  unkindness,"  answered  the  girl  with  a  quick 
reproachful  look,  "their  perpetual  unkindness." 

"But  they  feed  you  well,  don't  they.''"  said  the 
hermit,  removing  his  hat  and  rearranging  the  cabbage- 
leaf  so  as  to  adapt  it  to  the  new  angle  of  the  sun. 
"And  they  don't  beat  you.  You  haven't  to  scrub 
floors  or  mend  clothes.     People,  like  you  and  I,  must 


THE   PARIAHS  87 

be  thankful  for  being  allowed  to  eat  and  sleep  at  all 
on  this  badly-arranged  earth." 

"I  keep  thinking  of  Italy,"  murmured  Lacrima. 
"I  think  it  is  your  English  ways  that  trouble  me. 
I  don't  believe  —  I  can't  believe  —  they  always  mean 
to  be  unkind.     But  English  people  are  so  heartless!" 

"You  seemed  to  like  that  Andersen  fellow  well 
enough,"  grumbled  Mr.  Quincunx. 

"How  can  you  be  so  silly,  Maurice?"  cried  the 
girl,  slipping  through  the  gate  in  spite  of  its  owner's 
furtive  glances  down  the  road.  "How  can  you  be  so 
silly?" 

She  moved  past  him,  up  the  path,  and  seated  her- 
self upon  the  edge  of  the  wheel-barrow. 

"You  can  go  on  with  your  weeding,"  she  said,  "I 
can  talk  to  you  while  you  work," 

"Of  course,"  murmured  Mr.  Quincunx,  making  no 
effort  to  resume  his  labour,  "you  naturally  find  a 
handsome  fellow  like  that,  a  more  pleasant  companion 
than  me.  I  don't  blame  you.  I  understand  it  very 
well." 

Lacrima  impatiently  took  up  a  handful  of  groundsel 
and  spurge  from  the  dusty  heap  by  her  side  and  flung 
them  into  the  path. 

"You  make  me  quite  angry  with  you,  Maurice," 
she  cried.  "How  can  you  say  such  things  after  all 
that  has  happened  between  us?" 

"That's  the  way,"  jeered  the  man  bitterly,  plucking 
at  his  beard.  "That's  the  way!  Go  on  abusing  me 
because  you  are  not  living  at  your  full  pleasure,  like  a 
stall-fed  upper-class  lady!" 

"I  shan't  stay  with  you  another  moment,"  cried 
Lacrima,  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  "if  you  are  so  unkind." 


88  WOOD  AND   STONE 

As  soon  as  he  had  reduced  her  to  this  point,  Mr. 
Quincunx  instantaneously  became  gentle  and  tender. 
This  is  one  of  the  profoundest  laws  of  a  Pariah's 
being.  He  resents  it  when  his  companion  in  helpless- 
ness shows  a  spirit  beyond  his  own,  but  directly  such 
a  one  has  been  driven  into  reciprocal  wretchedness, 
his  own  equanimity  is  automatically  regained. 

After  only  the  briefest  glance  at  the  gate,  he  put 
his  arms  round  the  girl  and  kissed  her  aflFectionately. 
She  returned  his  embrace  with  interest,  disarranging 
as  she  did  so  the  cabbage-leaf  in  his  hat,  and  causing 
it  to  flutter  down  upon  the  path.  They  leant  to- 
gether for  a  while  in  silence,  against  the  edge  of  the 
wheel-barrow,  their  hands  joined. 

Thus  associated  they  would  have  appeared,  to  the 
dreaded  passer-by,  in  the  light  of  a  pair  of  extremely 
sentimental  lovers,  whose  passion  had  passed  into  the 
stage  of  delicious  melancholia.  The  wind  whirled 
the  dust  in  little  eddies  around  them  and  the  sun  beat 
down  upon  their  heads. 

"You  must  be  kind  to  me  when  I  come  to  tell  you 
how  unhappy  I  am,"  said  the  Italian.  "You  are  the 
only  real  friend  I  have  in  the  world." 

It  is  sad  to  have  to  relate  that  these  tender  words 
brought  a  certain  thrill  of  alarm  into  the  heart  of 
Mr.  Quincunx.  He  felt  a  sudden  apprehension  lest 
she  might  indicate  that  it  was  his  duty  to  run  away 
with  her,  and  face  the  world  in  remote  regions. 

No  one  but  a  born  Pariah  could  have  endured  the 
confiding  clasp  of  that  little  hand  and  the  memory 
of  so  ardent  a  kiss  without  being  roused  to  an  impetu- 
osity of  passion  ready  to  dare  anything  to  make  her 
its  own. 


THE  PARIAHS  89 

Instead  of  pursuing  any  further  the  question  of  his 
friend's  troubles,  Mr.  Quincunx  brought  the  conver- 
sation round  to  his  own. 

"The  worst  that  could  happen  to  me  has  hap- 
pened," he  said,  and  he  told  her  of  his  interview  with 
the  Romers  the  day  before.  The  girl  flushed  with 
anger. 

"But  this  is  abominable!"  she  cried,  "simply 
abominable!  You'd  better  go  at  once  and  talk  it 
over  with  Mrs.  Seldom.  Surely,  surely,  something 
can  be  done!  It  is  clear  they  have  robbed  you  of 
your  money.  It  is  a  disgraceful  thing!  Santa  Maria 
—  what  a  country  this  is!" 

"It  is  no  use,"  sighed  the  man  helplessly.  "Mrs. 
Seldom  can't  help  me.  She  is  poor  enough  herself. 
And  she  will  know  as  well  as  I  do  that  in  the  matter 
of  law  I  am  entirely  in  their  hands.  My  aunt  had 
absolute  confidence  in  Mr.  Romer  and  no  confidence 
in  me.  No  doubt  she  arranged  it  with  them  that 
they  were  to  dole  me  out  the  money  like  a  charity. 
Mr.  Romer  did  once  talk  about  my  lending  it  to  him, 
and  his  paying  interest  on  it,  and  so  forth;  but  he 
managed  all  my  aunt's  affairs,  and  I  don't  know  what 
arrangement  he  made  with  her.  My  aunt  never 
liked  me  really.  I  think  if  she  were  alive  now  she 
would  probably  support  them  in  what  they  are  doing. 
She  would  certainly  say,  —  she  always  used  to  say  — 
that  it  would  do  me  good  to  do  a  little  honest 
work."  He  pronounced  the  words  "honest  work" 
with  concentrated  bitterness. 

"Probably,"  he  went  on,  "Mrs.  Seldom  would  say 
the  same.  I  know  I  should  be  extremely  unwilling  to 
try  and  make  her  see  how  horrible  to  me  the  idea  of 


90  WOOD  AND   STONE 

work  of  this  kind  is.  She  would  never  understand. 
She  would  think  it  was  only  that  I  wanted  to  remain 
a  "gentleman"  and  not  to  lose  caste.  She  would 
probably  tell  me  that  a  great  many  gentlemen  have 
worked  in  offices  before  now.  I  daresay  they  have, 
and  I  hope  they  enjoyed  it!  I  know  what  these 
gentlemen-workers  are,  and  how  easy  things  are  made 
for  them.  They  won't  be  made  easy  for  me.  I  can 
tell  you  that,  Lacrimal" 

The  girl  drew  a  deep  sigh,  and  walked  slowly  a  few 
paces  down  the  path,  meditating,  with  her  hands 
behind  her.     Presently  she  turned. 

"Perhaps  after  all,"  she  said,  "it  won't  be  as  bad 
as  you  fancy.  I  know  the  head-clerk  in  Mr.  Romer's 
Yeoborough  office  and  he  is  quite  a  nice  man  —  alto- 
gether different  from  that  Lickwit." 

Mr.  Quincunx  stroked  his  beard  with  a  trembling 
hand.  "Of  course  I  knew  you'd  say  that,  Lacrima. 
You  are  just  like  the  rest.  You  women  all  think, 
at  the  bottom  of  your  hearts,  that  men  are  no  good 
if  they  can't  make  money.  I  believe  you  have  an 
idea  that  I  ought  to  do  what  people  call  'get  on  a 
bit  in  the  world.'  If  you  think  that,  it  only  shows 
how  little  you  understand  me.  I  have  no  intention  of 
'getting  on.'  I  wont  'get  on'!  I  would  sooner  walk 
into  Auber  Lake  and  end  the  whole  business!" 

The  suddenness  and  injustice  of  this  attack  really 
did  rouse  the  Italian  to  anger.  "Good-bye,"  she  said 
with  a  dark  flash  in  her  eyes.  "I  see  its  no  use 
talking  to  you  when  you  are  in  this  mood.  You 
have  never,  never  spoken  to  me  in  that  tone  before. 
Good-bye!  I  can  open  the  gate  for  myself,  thank 
you." 


THE   PARIAHS  91 


She  walked  away  from  him  and  passed  out  into 
the  lane.  He  stood  watching  her  with  a  queer 
haggard  look  on  his  face,  his  sorrowful  grey  eyes 
staring  in  front  of  him,  as  if  in  the  presence  of  an 
apparition.  Then,  very  slowly,  he  resumed  his  work, 
leaving  however  the  fallen  cabbage-leaf  unnoticed  on 
the  ground. 

The  weeds  in  the  wheel-barrow,  the  straight 
banked-up  lines  of  potatoes  and  lettuces,  wore,  as  he 
returned  to  them,  that  curious  air  of  forlorn  desertion 
which  is  one  of  nature's  bitterest  commentaries  upon 
the  folly  of  such  scenes. 

A  sickening  sense  of  emptiness  took  possession  of 
him,  and  in  a  moment  or  two  became  unendurable. 
He  flung  a  handful  of  weeds  to  the  ground  and  ran 
impetuously  to  the  gate  and  out  into  the  lane.  It 
was  too  late.  A  group  of  farm-labourers  laughing 
and  shouting,  and  driving  before  them  a  herd  of 
black  pigs,  blocked  up  the  road.  He  could  not 
bring  himself  to  pass  them,  thus  hatless  and  in  his 
shirt-sleeves.  Besides,  they  must  have  seen  the  girl, 
and  they  would  know  he  was  pursuing  her. 

He  returned  slowly  up  the  path  to  his  house, 
and  —  to  avoid  being  seen  by  the  men  —  entered 
his  kitchen,  and  sat  gloomily  down  upon  a  chair. 
The  clock  on  the  mantelpiece  ticked  with  con- 
temptuous unconcern.  The  room  had  that  smell 
of  mortuary  dust  which  rooms  in  small  houses  often 
acquire  in  the  summer.  He  sat  down  once  more  on  a 
chair,  his  hands  upon  his  knees,  and  stared  vacantly 
in  front  of  him.  A  thrush  outside  the  window  was 
cracking  a  snail  upon  a  stone.  When  the  shouts  of 
the  men  died  away,  this  was  the  only  sound  that  came 


92  WOOD  AND   STOXE 

to  him,  except  the  continual  "tick  —  tick  —  tick  — 
tick"  of  the  clock,  which  seemed  to  be  occupied  in 
driving  nails  into  the  heavy  coffin-lid  of  every  mortal 
joy  that  time  had  ever  brought  forth. 

That  same  night  in  Nevilton  House  was  a  night 
of  wretched  hours  for  Lacrima,  but  of  hours  of  a 
wretchedness  more  active  than  that  which  made  the 
hermit  of  Dead  Man's  Cottage  pull  the  clothes  over 
his  head  and  turn  his  face  to  the  wall,  long  ere  the 
twilight  had  vanished  from  his  garden. 

On  leaving  her  friend  thus  abruptly,  her  heart  full 
of  angry  revolt,  Lacrima  had  seen  the  crowd  of  men 
and  animals  approaching,  and  to  escape  them  had 
scrambled  into  a  field  on  the  border  of  the  road. 
Following  a  little  path  which  led  across  it,  and  cross- 
ing two  more  meadows,  she  flung  herself  down  under 
the  shadow  of  some  great  elms,  in  a  sort  of  grassy 
hollow  beneath  an  over-grown  hedge,  and  gave  full 
vent  to  her  grief.  The  hollow  in  which  she  hid 
herself  was  a  secluded  and  lonely  spot,  and  no  sound 
reached  her  but  the  monotonous  summer-murmur  of 
the  flies  and  the  rustle  of  the  wind-troubled  branches. 
Lying  thus,  prone  on  her  face,  her  broad-brimmed  hat 
with  its  poppy-trimmings  thrown  down  at  her  side, 
and  her  limbs  trembling  with  the  violence  of  her 
sobs,  Lacrima  seemed  to  insert  into  that  alien  land- 
scape an  element  of  passionate  feeling  quite  foreign 
to  its  sluggish  fertility.  Not  alien  to  the  spot,  how- 
ever, was  another  human  form,  that  at  the  same  hour 
had  been  led  to  wander  among  those  lush  meadows. 

The  field  behind  the  high  bank  and  thick-set  hedge 
which  overshadowed  the  unhappy  girl,  was  a  large 
and  spacious  one,  "put  up,"  as  country  people  say. 


THE   PARIAHS  93 

"for  hay,"  but  as  yet  untouched  by  the  mowers' 
machines.  Here,  in  the  heat  of  the  noon,  walked  the 
acquisitive  Mr.  John  Goring,  calculating  the  value  of 
this  crop  of  grass,  and  deciding  upon  the  appropriate 
date  of  its  cutting. 

What  curious  irony  is  it,  in  the  blind  march  of 
events,  which  so  frequently  draws  to  the  place  of  our 
exclusive  sorrow  the  one  particular  spectator  that  we 
would  most  avoid?  One  talks  lightly  of  coincidence 
and  of  chance;  but  who  that  has  walked  through  life 
observingly  has  not  been  driven  to  pause  with  sad 
questioning  before  accidents  and  occurrences  that 
seem  as  though  some  conscious  malignity  in  things 
had  arranged  them?  Are  there,  perhaps,  actual  tele- 
pathic vibrations  at  work  about  us,  drawing  the 
hunter  to  his  prey  —  the  prey  to  the  hunter?  Is 
the  innocent  object  of  persecution,  hiding  from  its 
persecutors,  compelled  by  a  fatal  psychic  law  —  the 
law  of  its  own  terror  —  to  call  subconsciously  upon 
the  very  power  it  is  fleeing  from;  to  betray,  against 
its  will,  the  path  of  its  own  retreat?  Lacrima  in  any 
case,  as  she  lay  thus  prostrate,  her  poppy-trimmed 
hat  beside  her,  and  her  brown  curls  flecked  with  spots 
of  sun  and  shadow,  brought  into  that  English  land- 
scape a  strangely  remote  touch,  —  a  touch  of  tragic 
and  passionate  colour.  A  sweet  bruised  exile,  she 
seemed,  from  another  region,  flung  down,  among  all 
this  umbrageous  rankness,  to  droop  like  a  trans- 
planted flower.  Certainly  the  sinister  magic,  what- 
ever it  was,  that  had  drawn  Mr.  Goring  in  that  fatal 
direction,  was  a  magic  compounded  of  the  attraction 
of  contrary  elements. 

If  Mr.  Romer  represented  the  occult  power  of  the 


94  WOOD  AND   STONE 

sandstone  hill,  his  brother-in-law  was  the  very 
epitome  and  culmination  of  the  valley's  inert  clay. 
The  man  breathed  clay,  looked  clay,  smelt  clay, 
understood  clay,  exploited  clay,  and  in  a  literal  sense 
was  clay. 

If  there  is  any  truth  in  the  scientific  formula 
about  the  "survival"  of  those  most  "adapted"  to 
their  "environment,"  Mr.  Goring  was  sure  of  a 
prolonged  and  triumphant  sojourn  on  this  mortal 
globe.  For  his  "environment"  was  certainly  one  of 
clay  —  and  to  clay  he  certainly  was  most  prosper- 
ously "adapted." 

It  was  not  long  before  the  tragic  sobs  of  the  un- 
happy Lacrima,  borne  across  the  field  on  the  east- 
wind,  arrested  the  farmer's  attention.  He  stood  still, 
and  listened,  snuffing  the  air,  like  a  great  jungle-boar. 
Then  with  rapid  but  furtive  steps  he  crossed  over  to 
where  the  sound  proceeded,  and  slipping  down 
cautiously  through  a  gap  in  the  hedge,  made  his  way 
towards  the  secluded  hollow,  breathing  heavily  like 
an  animal  on  a  trail. 

Her  fit  of  crying  having  subsided,  Lacrima  turned 
round  on  her  back,  and  remained  motionless,  gazing 
up  at  the  blue  sky.  Extended  thus  on  the  ruffled 
grass,  her  little  fingers  nervously  plucking  at  its  roots 
and  her  breast  still  heaving,  the  young  girl  offered  a 
pitiful  enough  picture  to  any  casual  intruder.  Slight 
and  fragile  though  she  was,  the  softness  and  charm  of 
her  figure  witnessed  to  her  Latin  origin.  With  her 
dusky  curls  and  olive  complexion,  she  might,  but  for 
her  English  dress,  have  been  taken  for  a  strayed 
gipsy,  recovering  from  some  passionate  quarrel  with 
her  Romany  lover. 


THE  PARIAHS  95 

"What's  the  matter,  Miss  Lacrima?"  was  the 
farmer's  greeting  as  his  gross  form  obtruded  itself 
against  the  sky-line. 

The  girl  started  violently,  and  scrambled  rapidly 
to  her  feet.  Mr.  Goring  stepped  awkwardly  down 
the  grassy  slope  and  held  out  his  hand. 

"Good  morning,"  he  said  without  removing  his  hat. 
"I  should  have  thought  'twas  time  for  you  to  be  up 
at  the  House.     'Tis  past  a  quarter  of  one." 

"I  was  just  resting,"  stammered  the  girl.  "I  hope 
I  have  not  hurt  your  grass."  She  looked  apprehen- 
sively down  at  the  pathetic  imprint  on  the  ground. 

"No,  no!  Missie,"  said  the  man.  "That's  nothing. 
'Tis  hard  to  cut,  in  a  place  like  this.  Maybe  they'll 
let  it  alone.  Besides,  this  field  ain't  for  hay.  The 
cows  will  be  in  here  tomorrow." 

Lacrima  looked  at  the  watch  on  her  wrist. 

"Yes,  you  are  right,"  she  said.  "I  am  late.  I 
must  be  running  back.  Your  brother  does  not  like 
our  being  out  when  he  comes  in  to  lunch."  She 
picked  up  her  hat  and  made  as  if  she  would  pass  him. 
But  he  barred  her  way. 

"Not  so  quick,  lassie,  not  so  quick,"  he  said. 
"Those  that  come  into  farmers'  fields  must  not 
be  too  proud  to  pass  the  time  of  day  with  the 
farmer." 

As  he  spoke  he  permitted  his  little  voracious  pig's 
eyes  to  devour  her  with  an  amorous  leer.  All  manner 
of  curious  thoughts  passed  through  his  head.  It  was 
only  yesterday  that  his  brother-in-law  had  been  talk- 
ing to  him  of  this  girl.  Certainly  it  would  be  ex- 
tremely satisfactory  to  be  the  complete  master  of 
that  supple,  shrinking  figure,  and  of  that  frightened 


96  WOOD   AND   STONE 

little  bosom,  that  rose  and  fell  now,  like  the  heart  of 
a   panting   hare. 

After  all,  she  was  only  a  sort  of  superior  serv- 
ant, and  with  servants  of  every  kind  the  manner  of 
the  rapacious  Mr.  Goring  was  alternately  brutal  and 
endearing.  Encouraged  by  the  isolation  of  the  spot 
and  the  shrinking  alarm  of  the  girl,  he  advanced  still 
nearer  and  laid  a  heavy  hand  upon  her  shoulder. 

"Come,  little  wench,"  he  said,  "I  will  answer  for  it 
if  you're  late,  up  at  the  House.  Sit  down  a  bit  with 
me,  and  let's  make  ourselves  nice  and  comfortable." 

Lacrima  trembled  with  terror.  She  was  afraid  to 
push  him  away,  and  try  to  scramble  out  of  the 
hollow,  lest  in  doing  so  she  should  put  herself  still 
further  at  his  mercy.  She  wondered  if  anyone  in  the 
road  would  hear  if  she  screamed  aloud.  Her  quick 
Latin  brain  resorted  mechanically  to  a  diplomatic 
subterfuge.  "What  kind  of  field  have  you  got  over 
that  hedge?"  she  asked,  with  a  quiver  in  her  voice. 

"A  very  nice  field  for  hay,  my  dear,"  replied  the 
farmer,  removing  his  hand  from  her  shoulder  and 
thinking  in  his  heart  that  these  foreign  girls  were 
wonderfully  easy  to  manage. 

"I'll  show  it  to  you  if  you  like.  There's  a  pretty 
little  place  for  people  like  you  and  me  to  have  a  chat 
in,  up  along  over  there."  He  pointed  through  the 
hedge  to  a  small  copse  of  larches  that  grew  green  and 
thick  at  the  corner  of  the  hay-field. 

She  let  him  give  her  his  hand  and  pull  her  out  of 
the  hollow.  Quite  passively,  too,  she  followed  him, 
as  he  sought  the  easiest  spot  through  which  he  might 
help  her  to  surmount  the  difficulties  of  the  intervening 
hedge. 


I 


THE   PARIAHS  97 

When  he  had  at  last  decided  upon  the  place, 
"Go  first,  please,  Mr.  Goring,"  she  murmured, 
"and   then   you   can   pull    me   up." 

He  turned  his  back  upon  her  and  began  laboriously 
ascending  the  bank,  dragging  himself  forward  by  the 
aid  of  roots  and  ferns.  It  had  been  easy  enough  to 
slide  down  this  declivity.  It  was  much  less  easy  to 
climb  up.  At  length,  however,  stung  by  nettles  and 
pricked  by  thorns,  and  with  earth  in  his  mouth,  he 
swung  himself  round  at  the  top,  ready  to  help  her  to 
follow  him. 

A  vigorous  oath  escaped  his  lips.  She  was  al- 
ready a  third  of  the  way  across  the  field,  running 
madly  and  desperately,  towards  the  gate  into 
the   lane. 

Mr.  Goring  shook  his  fist  after  her  retreating  fig- 
ure. "All  right,  Missie,"  he  muttered  aloud,  "all 
right!  If  you  had  been  kind  to  the  poor  farmer, 
he  might  have  let  you  off.  But  now"  —  and  he  dug 
his  stick  viciously  into  the  earth  —  "There'll  be  no 
dilly-dallying  or  nonsense  about  this  business.  I'll 
tell  Romer  I'm  ready  for  this  marriage-affair  as  soon 
as  he  likes.     I'll  teach  you  —  my  pretty  darling!" 

That  night  the  massive  Leonian  masonry  of  Nevil- 
ton  House  seemed  especially  heavy  and  antipathetic 
to  the  child  of  the  Apennines,  as  it  rose,  somnolent 
and  oppressive  about  her,  in  the  hot  midsummer  air. 

In  their  spacious  rooms,  looking  out  upon  the  east 
court  with  its  dove-cotes  and  herbacious  borders, 
the   two   girls   were   awake   and   together. 

The  wind  had  fallen,  and  the  silence  about  the 
place  was  as  oppressive  to  Lacrima's  mind  as  the 
shadow  of  some  colossal  raven's  wing. 


98  WOOD  AND   STONE 

The  door  which  separated  their  chambers  was 
ajar,  and  Gladys,  her  yellow  hair  loose  upon  her 
shoulders,  had  flung  herself  negligently  down  in  a 
deep  wicker-chair  at  the  side  of  her  companion's  bed. 

The  luckless  Pariah,  her  brown  curls  tied  back 
from  her  pale  forehead  by  a  dark  ribbon,  was  lying 
supine  upon  her  pillows  with  a  look  of  troubled  terror 
in  her  wide-open  eyes.  One  long  thin  arm  lay  upon 
the  coverlet,  the  fingers  tightened  upon  an  open  book. 

At  the  beginning  of  her  "visit"  to  Nevilton  House 
she  had  clung  desperately  to  these  precious  night- 
hours,  w^hen  the  great  establishment  was  asleep; 
and  she  had  even  been  so  audacious  as  to  draw  the 
bolt  of  the  door  which  separated  her  from  her  cousin. 
But  that  wilful  young  tyrant  had  pretended  to  her 
mother  that  she  often  "got  frightened"  in  the  night, 
so  orders  had  gone  out  that  the  offending  bolt  should 
be  removed. 

After  this,  Gladys  had  her  associate  quite  at 
her  mercy,  and  the  occasions  were  rare  when  the 
pleasure  of  being  allowed  to  read  herself  to  sleep 
was  permitted  to  the  younger  girl. 

It  was  curiously  irritating  to  the  yellow-haired 
despot  to  observe  the  pleasure  which  Lacrima  de- 
rived from  these  solitary  readings.  Gladys  got  into 
the  habit  of  chattering  on,  far  into  the  night,  so  as 
to  make  sure  that,  when  she  did  retire,  her  cousin 
would  be  too  weary  to  do  anything  but  fall  asleep. 

As  the  two  girls  lay  thus  side  by  side,  the  one  in 
her  chair,  and  the  other  in  her  bed,  under  the  weight 
of  the  night's  sombre  expectancy,  the  contrast  be- 
tween them  was  emphasized  to  a  fine  dramatic  point. 
The  large-winged  bat  that  fluttered    every  now  and 


THE  PARIAHS  99 

then  across  the  window  might  have  caught,  if  for  a 
brief  moment  it  could  have  been  endowed  with 
human  vision,  a  strange  sense  of  the  tragic  power 
of  one  human  being  over  another,  when  the  restriction 
of  a  common  roof  compels  their  propinquity. 

One  sometimes  seeks  to  delude  oneself  in  the  fond 
belief  that  our  European  domestic  hearths  are  places 
of  peace  and  freedom,  compared  with  the  dark  haunts 
of  savagery  in  remoter  lands.  It  is  not  true!  The 
long-evolved  system  that,  with  us,  groups  together, 
under  one  common  authority,  beings  as  widely 
sundered  as  the  poles,  is  a  system  that,  for  all  its 
external  charm,  conceals,  more  often  than  anyone 
could  suppose,  subtle  and  gloomy  secrets,  as  dark  and 
heathen   as   any   in   those   less   favoured   spots. 

The  nervous  organization  of  many  frail  human  ani- 
mals is  such  that  the  mere  fact  of  being  compelled, 
out  of  custom  and  usage  and  economic  helplessness, 
to  live  in  close  relation  with  others,  is  itself  a  tragic 
purgatory. 

It  is  often  airily  assumed  that  the  obstinate  and 
terrible  struggles  of  life  are  encountered  abroad  — 
far  from  home  —  in  desolate  contention  with  the 
elements  or  with  enemies.  It  is  not  so!  The  most 
obstinate  and  desperate  struggles  of  all  —  struggles 
for  the  preservation  of  one's  most  sacred  identity,  of 
one's  inmost  liberty  of  action  and  feeling  —  take 
place,  and  have  their  advances  and  retreats,  their 
treacheries  and  their  betrayals,  under  the  hypocritical 
calm  of  the  domestic  roof.  Those  who  passionately 
resent  any  agitation,  any  free  thought,  any  legislative 
interference,  which  might  cause  these  fortresses  of 
seclusion  to  enlarge  their  boundaries,  forget,  in  their 


100  WOOD  AND   STONE 

poetic  idealization  of  the  Gods  of  the  Hearth,  that 
tragedies  are  often  enacted  under  that  fair  consecra- 
tion which  would  dim  the  sinister  repute  of  Argos  or 
of  Thebes.  The  Platonic  speculations  which,  all 
through  human  history,  have  erected  their  fanciful 
protests  against  these  perils,  may  often  be  unscientijfic 
and  ill-considered.  But  there  is  a  smouldering  pas- 
sion of  heroic  revolt  behind  such  dreams,  which  it  is 
not  always  wise  to  overlook. 

As  these  two  girls,  the  fair-haired  and  the  dark- 
haired,  let  the  solemn  burden  of  the  night  thus  press 
unheeded  upon  them,  they  would  have  needed  no 
fantastic  imagination,  in  an  invisible  observer,  to  be 
aware  of  the  tense  vibration  between  them  of  some 
formidable   spiritual   encounter. 

High  up  above  the  mass  of  Leonian  stone  which 
we  have  named  Nevilton  House,  the  Milky  Way 
trailed  its  mystery  of  far-off  brightness  across  the 
incredible  gulfs.  What  to  it  was  the  fact  that  one 
human  heart  should  tremble  like  a  captured  bird  in 
the  remorseless  power  of  another? 

It  was  not  to  this  indifferent  sky,  stretched  equally 
over  all,  that  hands  could  be  lifted.  And  yet  the 
scene  between  the  girls  must  have  appeared,  to  such 
an  invisible  watcher,  as  linked  to  a  dramatic  contest 
above  and  beyond  their  immediate  human  person- 
alities. 

In  this  quiet  room  the  "Two  Mythologies"  were 
grappling;  each  drawing  its  strength  from  forces  of  an 
origin  as  baffling  to  reason  as  the  very  immensity  of 
those  spaces  above,  so  indifferent  to  both! 

The  hatred  that  Gladys  bore  to  Lacrima's  enjoy- 
ment of  her   midnight  readings   was   a  characteristic 


THE  PARIAHS  101 

indication  of  the  relations  between  the  girls.  It  is 
always  infuriating  to  a  well-constituted  nature  to 
observe  these  little  pathetic  devices  of  pleasure  in 
a  person  who  has  no  firm  grip  upon  life.  It  excites 
the  same  healthy  annoyance  as  w^hen  one  sees  some 
absurd  animal  that  ought,  properly  speaking,  not  to 
be  alive  at  all,  deriving  ridiculous  satisfaction  from 
some  fantastic  movement  incredible  to  sound  senses. 

The  Pariah  had,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  defeated  her 
healthy-minded  cousin  by  using  one  of  those  sly 
tricks  which  Pariahs  alone  indulge  in;  and  had 
craftily  acquired  the  habit  of  slipping  away  earlier 
to  her  room,  and  snatching  little  oases  of  solitary 
happiness  before  the  imperious  young  woman  came 
upstairs.  It  was  in  revenge  for  these  evasions  that 
Gladys  was  even  now  announcing  to  her  companion 
a  new  and  calculated  outrage  upon  her  slave's  peace 
of  mind. 

Every  Pariah  has  some  especial  and  peculiar  dread, 
—  some  nervous  mania.  Lacrima  had  several  in- 
nate terrors.  The  strongest  of  all  was  a  shuddering 
dread  of  the  supernatural.  Next  to  this,  what  she 
most  feared  was  the  idea  of  deep  cold  water.  Lakes, 
rivers,  and  chilly  inland  streams,  always  rather 
alarmed  than  inspired  her.  The  thought  of  mill- 
ponds,  as  they  eddied  and  gurgled  in  the  darkness, 
often  came  to  her  as  a  supreme  fear,  and  the  image 
of  indrawn  dark  waters,  sucked  down  beneath  weirs 
and  dams,  was  a  thing  she  could  not  contemplate 
without  trembling.  It  was  no  doubt  the  Genoese 
blood  in  her,  crying  aloud  for  the  warm  blue  waves 
of  the  Mediterranean  and  shrinking  from  the  chill 
of  our  English  ditches,  that  accounted  for  this  peculi- 


102  WOOD   AXD   STONE 

arity.  The  poor  child  had  done  her  best  to  conceal 
her  feeling,  but  Gladys,  alert  as  all  healthy  minded 
people  are,  to  seize  upon  the  silly  terrors  of  the  ill- 
constituted,  had  not  let  it  pass  unobserved,  and  was 
now  serenely  prepared  to  make  good  use  of  it,  as  a 
heaven-sent  opportunity  for  revenge. 

It  must  be  noted,  that  in  the  centre  of  the  north 
garden  of  Nevilton  House,  surrounded  by  cypress- 
bordered  lawns  and  encircled  by  a  low  hedge  of  care- 
fully clipped  rosemary,  was  a  deep  round  pond. 

This  pond,  built  entirely  of  Leonian  stone,  lent 
itself  to  the  playing  of  a  splendid  fountain  —  a  foun- 
tain which  projected  from  an  ornamental  island, 
covered   with   overhanging   ferns. 

The  fountain  only  played  on  state  occasions,  and 
the  coolness  and  depth  of  the  water,  combined  with 
the  fact  that  the  pond  had  a  stone  bottom,  gave  the 
place  admirable  possibilities  for  bathing.  Gladys  her- 
self, full  of  animal  courage  and  buoyant  energy,  had 
made  a  custom  during  the  recent  hot  weather  of 
rising  from  her  bed  early  in  the  morning,  before  the 
servants  were  up,  and  enjoying  a  matutinal  plunge. 

She  was  a  practised  swimmer  and  had  been  lately 
learning  to  dive;  and  the  sensation  of  slipping  out 
of  the  silent  house,  garbed  in  a  bathing-dress,  with 
sandals  on  her  feet,  and  an  opera-cloak  over  her 
shoulders,  was  thrilling  to  every  nerve  of  her  healthy 
young  body.  Impervious  animal  as  she  was,  she 
would  hardly  have  been  human  if  those  dew-drenched 
lawns  and  exquisite  morning  odours  had  not  at  least 
crossed  the  margin  of  her  consciousness.  She  had 
hitherto  been  satisfied  with  a  proud  sense  of  superi- 
ority over  her  timid  companion,  and  Lacrima  so  far, 


THE  PARIAHS  103 

had  been  undisturbed  by  these  excursions,  except  in 
the  welcoming  of  her  cousin  on  her  return,  dripping 
and  laughing,  and  full  of  whimsical  stories  of  how 
she  had  peeped  down  over  the  terrace-wall,  and  seen 
the  milk-men,  in  the  field  below,  driving  in  their 
cattle. 

Looking  about,  however,  in  her  deliberate  feline 
way,  for  some  method  of  pleasant  revenge,  she  had 
suddenly  hit  upon  this  bathing  adventure  as  a  heaven- 
inspired  opportunity.  The  thought  of  it  when  it 
first  came  to  her  as  she  languidly  sunned  herself, 
like  a  great  cat,  on  the  hot  parapet  of  the  pond,  had 
made  her  positively  laugh  for  joy.  She  would  compel 
her  cousin  to  accompany  her  on  these  occasions! 

Lacrima  was  not  only  terrified  of  water,  but  was 
abnormally  reluctant  and  shy  with  regard  to  any  risk 
of  being  observed  in  strange  or  unusual  garments. 

Gladys  had  stretched  herself  out  on  the  Leonian 
margin  of  the  pond  with  a  thrilling  sense  of  delight 
at  the  prospect  thus  offered.  She  would  be  able  to 
gratify,  at  one  and  the  same  time,  her  profound  need 
to  excel  in  the  presence  of  an  inferior,  and  her  in- 
satiable craving  to  outrage  that  inferior's  reserve. 

The  sun-warmed  slabs  of  Leonian  stone,  upon  which 
she  had  so  often  basked  in  voluptuous  contentment 
seemed  dumbly  to  encourage  and  stimulate  her  in 
this  heathen  design.  How  entirely  they  were  the 
accomplices  of  all  that  was  dominant  in  her  destiny 
—  these  yellow  blocks  of  stone  that  had  so  enriched 
her  house!  They  answered  to  her  own  blond  beauty, 
to  her  own  sluggish  remorselessness.  She  loved  their 
tawny  colour,  their  sandy  texture,  their  enduring 
strength.     She  loved  to  see  them  around  and  about 


104  WOOD   AND   STOXE 

her,  built  into  walls,  courts,  terraces  and  roofs.  They 
gave  support  and  weight  to  all  her  pretensions. 

Thus  it  had  been  with  an  almost  mystical  thrill  of 
exultation  that  she  had  felt  the  warmth  of  the  Leo- 
nian  slabs  caress  her  limbs,  as  this  new  and  exciting 
scheme  passed  through  her  mind. 

And  now,  luxuriously  seated  in  her  low  chair  by 
her  friend's  side  she  was  beginning  to  taste  the 
reward  of  her  inspiration. 

"Yes,"  she  said,  crossing  her  hands  negligently 
over  her  knees,  "it  is  so  dull  bathing  alone.  I  really 
think  you'll  have  to  do  it  with  me,  dear!  You'll 
like  it  all  right  when  once  you  begin.  It  is  only  the 
efifort  of  starting.  The  water  isn't  so  very  cold,  and 
where  the  sun  warms  the  parapet  it  is  lovely." 

"I  can't,  Gladys,"  pleaded  the  other,  from  her 
bed,  "I  can't  — I  can't!" 

"Nonsense,  child.  Don't  be  so  silly!  I  tell  you, 
you'll  enjoy  it.  Besides,  there's  nothing  like  bathing 
to  keep  one  healthy.  Mother  was  only  saying  last 
night  to  father  how  much  she  wished  you  would 
begin  it." 

Lacrima's  fingers  let  her  book  slip  through  them.  It 
slid  down  unnoticed  upon  the  floor  and  lay  open  there. 

She  sat  up  and  faced  her  cousin. 

"Gladys,"  she  said,  with  grave  intensity,  "if  you 
make  your  mother  insist  on  my  doing  this,  you  are 
more   wicked   than   I   ever  dreamed  you   would   be." 

Gladys  regarded  her  with  indolent  interest. 

"Its  only  at  first  the  water  feels  cold,"  she  said. 
"You  get  used  to  it,  after  the  first  dip.  I  always 
race  round  the  lawn  afterwards,  to  get  warm.  What's 
the  matter  now,  baby?" 


THE   PARIAHS  105 

These  final  words  were  due  to  the  fact  that  the 
Pariah  had  suddenly  put  up  her  hands  to  her  face 
and  was  shaking  with  sobs.  Gladys  rose  and  bent 
over  her.  "Silly  child,"  she  said,  "must  I  kiss  its 
tears  away.^*     Must  I  pet  it  and  cosset  it.''" 

She  pulled  impatiently  at  the  resisting  fingers,  and 
loosening  them,  after  a  struggle,  did  actually  go  so 
far  as  to  touch  the  girl's  cheek  with  her  lips.  Then 
sinking  back  into  her  chair  she  resumed  her  inter- 
rupted discourse. 

The  taste  of  salt  tears  had  not,  it  seemed,  softened 
her  into  any  weak  compliance.  Really  strong  and 
healthy  natures  learn  the  art,  by  degrees,  of  proving 
adamant,  to  the  insidious  cunning  of  these  persuasions. 

"Girls  of  our  class,"  she  announced  sententiously, 
"must  set  the  lower  orders  in  England  an  example 
of  hardiness.  Father  says  it  is  dreadful  how  effem- 
inate the  labouring  people  are  becoming.  They  are 
afraid  of  work,  afraid  of  fresh  air,  afraid  of  cold 
water,  afraid  of  discipline.  They  only  think  of  getting 
more  to  eat  and  drink." 

The  Pariah  turned  her  face  to  the  wall  and  lay 
motionless,  contemplating  the  cracks  and  crevices  in 
the  oak  panelling. 

Under  the  same  indifferent  stars  the  other  Pariah 
of  Nevilton  was  also  staring  hopelessly  at  the  wall. 
What  secrets  these  impassive  surfaces,  near  the  pil- 
lows of  sleepers,  could  reveal,  if  they  could  only 
speak! 

"Father  says  that  what  we  all  want  is  more 
physical  training,"  Gladys  went  on.  "This  next 
winter  you  and  I  must  do  some  practising  in  the 
Yeoborough  Gymnasium.     It  is  our  superior  physical 


106  WOOD  AND   STONE 

training,  father  says,  which  enables  us  to  hold  the 
mob  in  check.  Just  look  at  these  workmen  and 
peasants,  how  clumsily  they  slouch  about!" 

Lacrima  turned  round  at  this.  "Your  father  and 
his  friends  are  shamefully  hard  on  their  workmen. 
I  wish  they  would  strike  again!" 

Gladys  smiled  complacently.  The  scene  was  really 
beginning  to  surpass  even  what  she  had  hoped, 

"Why  are  you  such  a  baby,  Lacrima?"  she  said. 
"Stop  a  moment,  I  will  show  you  the  things  you 
shall  wear," 

She  glided  off  into  her  own  room,  and  presently 
returned  with  a  child's  bathing  dress. 

"Look,  dear!  Isn't  it  lucky?  I've  had  these  in 
my  wardwobe  ever  since  we  were  at  Eastbourne, 
years  and  years  ago.  They  will  not  be  a  bit  too 
small  for  you.  Or  if  they  are  —  it  doesn't  matter. 
No  one  will  see  us.  And  I'll  lend  you  my  mackintosh 
to  go  out  in." 

Lacrima's  head  sank  back  upon  her  pillows  and  she 
stared  at  her  cousin  with  a  look  of  helpless  terror, 

"You  needn't  look  so  horrified,  you  silly  little 
thing.  There's  nothing  to  be  afraid  of.  Besides, 
people  oughtn't  to  give  way  to  their  feelings.  They 
ought  to  be  brave  and  show  spirit.  It's  lucky  for 
you  you  did  come  to  us.  There's  no  knowing  what 
a  cowardly  little  thing  you'd  have  grown  into,  if 
you  hadn't.  Mother  is  quite  right.  It  will  do  you 
ever  so  much  good  to  bathe  with  me.  You  can't 
be  drowned,  you  know.  The  water  isn't  out  of  your 
depth  anywhere.  Father  says  every  girl  in  England 
ought  to  learn  to  swim,  so  as  to  be  able  to  rescue 
people.     He  says  that  this  is  the  great  new  idea  of 


THE  PARIAHS  107 

the  Empire  —  that  we  should  all  join  in  making  the 
race  braver  and  stronger.  You  are  English  now,  you 
know  —  not  Italian  any  more.  I  am  going  to  take 
fencing  lessons  soon.  Father  says  you  never  can  tell 
what  may  happen,  and  we  ought  all  to  be  prepared." 

Lacrima  did  not  speak.  A  vision  of  a  fierce  aggres- 
sive crowd  of  hard,  hostile,  healthy  young  persons, 
drilling,  riding,  shooting,  fencing,  and  dragging  such 
renegades  as  herself  remorselessly  along  with  them, 
blocked  every  vista  of  her  mind. 

"I  hate  the  Empire!"  she  cried  at  last.  Gladys 
had  subsided  once  more  into  her  chair  —  the  little 
bathing-suit,  symbol  of  our  natural  supremacy, 
clasped  fondly  in  her  lap. 

"I  know,"  she  said,  "where  you  get  your  socialistic 
nonsense  from.  Yes,  I  do!  You  needn't  shake  your 
head.     You  get  it  from  Maurice  Quincunx." 

"I  don't  get  it  from  anybody,"  protested  the 
Pariah;  and  then,  in  a  weak  murmur,  "it  grows  up 
naturally,  in  my  heart." 

"What  is  that  you're  saying.''"  cried  Gladys. 
"Sometimes  I  think  you  are  really  not  right  in  your 
mind.  You  mutter  so.  You  mutter,  and  talk  to 
yourself.  It  irritates  me  more  than  I  can  say.  It 
would  irritate  a  saint." 

"I  am  sorry  if  I  annoy  you,  cousin." 

"Annoy  me?  It  would  take  more  than  a  little 
coward  like  you  to  annoy  me!  But  I  am  not  going 
to  argue  about  it.  Father  says  arguing  is  only  fit 
for  feeble  people.  He  says  we  Romers  never  argue. 
We  think,  and  then  we  do.  I'm  going  to  bed.  So 
there's  your  book!  I  hope  you'll  enjoy  it  Miss 
Socialism!" 


108  WOOD  AND   STOXE 

She  picked  up  the  volume  from  the  floor  and  flung 
it  into  her  cousin's  lap.  The  gesture  of  contempt 
with  which  she  did  this  would  admirably  have  suited 
some  Roman  Drusilla  tossing  aside  the  culture  of 
slaves. 

An  hour  later  the  door  between  the  two  rooms 
was  hesitatingly  opened,  and  a  white  figure  stole  to 
the  head  of  Gladys'  couch.  "You're  not  asleep,  dear, 
are  you?  Oh  Gladys,  darling!  Please,  please,  please, 
don't  make  me  bathe  with  you!  You  don't  know 
how  I  dread  it." 

But  the  daughter  of  the  Romers  vouchsafed  no 
reply  to  this  appeal,  beyond  a  drowsy  "Nonsense  — 
nonsense  —  let's  only  pray  tomorrow  will  be  fine." 

The  night-owls,  that  swept,  on  heavy,  flapping 
wings,  over  the  village,  from  the  tower  of  St.  Cathar- 
ine's Church  to  the  pinnacles  of  the  manor,  brought 
no  miraculous  intervention  from  the  resting-place  of 
the  Holy-Rood.  What  was  St.  Catharine  doing  that 
she  had  thus  deserted  the  sanctuary  of  her  name.'* 
Perhaps  the  Alexandrian  saint  found  the  magic  of 
the  heathen  hill  too  strong  for  her;  or  perhaps  be- 
cause of  its  rank  heresy,  she  had  blotted  her  former 
shrine  altogether  from  her  tender  memory. 


4 


CHAPTER   VII 

IDYLLIC  PLEASURES 

MORTIMER    ROMER    could  not  be  called  a 
many-sided    man.       His    dominant    lust    for 
power   filled   his    life    so   completely    that   he 
had  little  room  for  excursions  into  the  worlds  of  art 
or  literature.     He  was,  however,  by  no  means  narrow 
or   stupid   in   these    matters.      He    had    at   least    the 
shrewdness  to  recognize  the  depth  of  their  influence 
over  other  people.     Indeed,  as  he  was  so  constantly 
occupied   with   this    very   question   of   influence,    with 
the    problem    of   what   precise    motives    and   impulses 
did    actually    stir    and    drive    the    average    mass    of 
humanity,   it   was   natural  that  he   should,   sooner  or 
later,  have  to  assume  some  kind  of  definite  attitude 
towards    these   things.      The   attitude   he   finally    hit 
upon,  as  most  harmonious  with  his  temperament,  was 
that  of  active  and  genial  patronage  combined  with  a 
modest    denial    of    the    possession    of    any    personal 
knowledge  or  taste.     He  recognized  that  an  occasion 
might   easily   arise,   when   some   association   with   the 
aesthetic    world,    even    of   this    modest    and    external 
kind,  might  prove  extremely  useful  to  him.     He  might 
find   it   advisable   to   make   use   of   these   alien   forces, 
just  as  Napoleon  found  it  necessary  to  make  use  of 
religion.      The    fact    that    he   himself   was   devoid   of 
ideal   emotions,   whether   religious    or    aesthetic,    mat- 
tered   nothing.      Only    fools    confined    their    psycho- 


110  WOOD  AND  STONE 

logical  interest  within  the  narrow  limits  of  their 
subjective  tastes.  Humanity  was  influenced  by  these 
things,  and  Romer  was  concerned  with  influencing 
humanity.  Not  that  these  deviations  into  artistic 
by-paths  carried  him  very  far.  He  would  invite 
"cultivated"  people  to  stay  with  him  in  his  noble 
House  —  at  least  they  would  appreciate  that!  — and 
then  hand  them  over  to  the  care  of  his  charming 
daughter,  a  method  of  hospitality  which,  it  must  be 
confessed,  seemed  to  meet  with  complete  approval 
on  the  part  of  those  concerned.  Thus  the  name  of 
the  owner  of  Leo's  Hill  came  to  be  associated,  in 
many  artistic  and  literary  circles,  with  the  names  of 
such  admirable  and  friendly  patrons  of  these  pur- 
suits, as  could  be  counted  upon  for  practical  and 
efficient,  if  not  for  intellectual  aid,  in  the  contest 
with  an  unsympathetic  and  materialistic  world.  It 
was  not  perhaps  the  more  struggling  and  less  pros- 
perous artists  who  found  him  their  friend.  To  most 
of  these  his  attitude,  though  kind  and  attentive,  was 
hardly  cordial.  He  knew  too  little  of  the  questions 
at  issue,  to  risk  giving  his  support  to  the  Pariahs 
and  Anarchists  of  Art.  It  was  among  the  well-known 
and  the  successful  that  Mr.  Romer's  patronage  was 
most  evident.  Success  was  a  quality  he  admired  in 
every  field;  and  while,  as  has  been  hinted,  his  per- 
sonal taste  remained  quite  untouched,  he  was  clever 
enough  to  pick  up  the  more  fashionable  catch- 
words of  current  criticism,  and  to  use  them,  when 
occasion  served,  with  effective  naturalness  and  ap- 
parent conviction. 

Among  other  celebrities   or  semi-celebrities,   across 
whose  track  he  came,  while  on  his  periodic  visits  to 


IDYLLIC  PLEASURES  111 

London,  was  a  certain  Ralph  Dangelis,  an  American 
artist,  whose  masterly  and  audacious  work  was  just 
then  coming  into  vogue.  True  to  his  imperial  instinct 
of  surrounding  himself  with  brilliant  and  prosperous 
clients,  if  such  they  could  be  called,  he  promptly 
invited  the  famous  Westerner  to  come  down  and 
stay  with  him  in  Nevilton. 

The  American,  who  knew  nothing  of  English 
country  life,  and  was  an  impassioned  and  desperate 
pursuer  of  all  new  experiences,  accepted  this  invita- 
tion, and  appeared,  among  the  quiet  Somersetshire 
orchards,  like  a  bolt  from  the  blue;  falling  into  the 
very  centre  of  the  small  quaintly  involved  drama, 
whose  acts  and  scenes  we  are  now  recording.  Thus 
plunged  into  a  completely  new  circle  the  distinguished 
adventurer  very  soon  made  himself  most  felicitously 
at  home.  He  was  of  a  frank  and  friendly  disposition; 
at  heart  an  obdurate  and  impenetrable  egoist,  but  on 
the  surface  affable  and  kind  to  a  quite  exceptional 
degree.  He  had  spent  several  years  in  both  Paris 
and  Rome,  and  hence  it  was  in  his  power  to  adapt 
himself  easily  and  naturally  to  European,  if  not  to 
English  ways.  One  result  of  his  protracted  visits 
to  foreign  cities  was  the  faculty  of  casting  off  at 
pleasure  his  native  accent  —  the  accent  of  a  citizen 
of  Toledo,  Ohio.  He  did  not  always  do  this.  Some- 
times it  was  his  humour,  especially  in  intercourse  with 
ladies,  to  revert  to  most  free  and  fearless  provincial- 
isms, and  a  certain  boyish  gaiety  in  him  made  him 
mischievously  addicted  to  use  such  expressions  when 
they  seemed  least  of  all  acceptable,  but  under  normal 
conditions  it  would  have  been  difficult  to  gather  from 
the  tone  of  his  language  that  he  was  anything  but 


112  WOOD  AND  STONE 

an  extremely  well-travelled  gentleman  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  birth.  He  speedily  made  a  fast  friend  of 
Gladys,  who  found  his  airy  persiflage  and  elaborate 
courtesy  eminently  to  her  liking;  and  as  the  long 
summer  days  succeeded  one  another  and  brought  the 
visitor  into  more  and  more  familiar  relation  with 
Nevilton  ways  and  customs,  it  seemed  as  though  his 
sojourn  in  that  peaceful  retreat  was  likely  to  be  in- 
definitely prolonged.  It  may  be  well  believed  that 
their  guest's  attraction  to  Gladys  did  not  escape 
the  notice  of  the  girl's  parents.  Mr.  Romer  took 
the  trouble  to  make  sundry  investigations  as  to  the 
status  of  Mr.  Dangelis  in  his  native  Ohio;  and  it 
was  with  unmixed  satisfaction  that  both  he  and  his 
wife  received  the  intelligence  that  he  was  the  son 
and  the  only  son  of  one  of  Toledo's  most  "promi- 
nent" citizens,  a  gentleman  actively  and  effectively 
engaged  in  furthering  the  progress  of  civilization  by 
the  manufacturing  of  automobiles.  Dangelis  was, 
indeed,  a  prospective,  if  not  an  actual,  millionaire, 
and,  from  all  that  could  be  learned,  it  appeared  that 
the  prominent  citizen  of  Toledo  handed  over  to  his 
son  an  annual  allowance  equal  to  the  income  of 
many  crowned  heads. 

The  Pariah  of  Nevilton  House  —  the  luckless  child 
of  the  Apennines  —  found  little  to  admire  in  this 
energetic  wanderer.  His  oratorical  manner,  his 
abrupt,  aggressive  courtesies,  his  exuberant  high 
spirits,  the  sweep  and  swing  of  his  vigorous  person- 
ality, the  extraordinary  mixture  in  him  of  pedantry 
and  gaiety,  jarred  upon  her  sensitive  over-strung 
nerves.  In  his  boyish  desire  to  please  her,  hearing 
that   she   came   from   Italy,    the   good-natured   artist 


IDYLLIC   PLEASURES  113 

i^ould  frequently  turn  the  conversation  round  to  the 
eauty  and  romance  of  that  "garden  of  the  world," 
s  he  was  pleased  to  style  her  home;  but  the  tone 
f  these  discourses  increased  rather  than  diminished 
iacrima's  obstinate  reserve.  He  had  a  habit  of  re- 
^rring  to  her  country  as  if  it  were  a  place  whose 
ihabitants  only  existed,  by  a  considerate  dispensa- 
ion  of  Providence,  to  furnish  a  charming  back- 
round  for  certain  invaluable  relics  of  antiquity, 
^hese  precious  fragments,  according  to  this  easy 
iew  of  things,  appeared  to  survive,  together  with 
lieir  appropriate  guardians,  solely  with  the  object 
f  enlarging  and  inspiring  the  vocarious  "mentality" 
f  wayfarers  from  London  and  New  York.  Grateful 
s  Lacrima  was  for  the  respite  the  artist  brought  her 
'om  the  despotism  of  her  cousin,  she  could  not 
ring  herself  to  regard  him,  so  far  as  she  herself  was 
oncerned,  with  anything  but  extreme  reserve  and 
aution. 
One  peculiarity  he  displayed,  filled  her  with  shy 
ismay.  Dangelis  had  a  trick  of  staring  at  the  people 
dth  whom  he  associated,  as  if  with  a  kind  of  quiz- 
ical  analysis.  He  threw  her  into  a  turmoil  of 
^retched  embarrassment  by  some  of  his  glances, 
he  was  troubled  and  frightened,  without  being  able 
a  get  at  the  secret  of  her  agitation.  Sometimes  she 
mcied  that  he  was  wondering  what  he  could  make 
f  her  as  a  model.  The  idea  that  anything  of  this 
ind  should  be  expected  of  her  filled  her  with  nervous 
read.  At  other  times  the  wild  idea  passed  through 
er  brain  that  he  was  making  covert  overtures  to 
er,  of  an  amorous  character.  She  thought  she  inter- 
epted   once   or   twice   a   look   upon   his   face   of   the 


114  WOOD  AND   STONE 

particular  kind  which  always  filled  her  with  shrink- 
ing apprehension.  This  illusion  —  if  it  were  an  illu- 
sion —  was  far  more  alarming  than  any  tendency  he 
might  display  to  pounce  on  her  for  aesthetic  purposes; 
for  the  Pariah's  association  with  the  inhabitants  of 
Nevilton  House  had  not  given  her  a  pleasing  impres- 
sion of  human  amorousness. 

Shortly  after  Dangelis'  arrival,  Mr.  Romer  found 
it  necessary  to  visit  London  again  for  a  few  days; 
and  the  artist  was  rather  relieved  than  otherwise  by 
his  departure.  He  felt  freer,  and  more  at  liberty 
to  express  his  ideas,  when  left  alone  with  the  three 
women.  For  himself,  however  varied  their  attitude 
to  him  might  be,  he  found  them  all,  in  their  different 
ways,  full  of  stimulating  interest.  With  Mrs.  Romer 
he  soon  became  perfectly  at  home;  and  discovered  a 
mischievous  and  profane  pleasure  in  the  process  of 
exciting  and  encouraging  all  her  least  lady-like  char- 
acteristics. He  would  follow  her  into  the  spacious 
Nevilton  kitchens,  where  the  good  lady  was  much  more 
at  home  than  in  her  stately  drawing  room;  and  watch 
with  unconventional  interest  her  rambling  domestic 
colloquies  with  Mrs.  Murphy  the  housekeeper,  Jane 
the  cook,  and  Lily  the  house-maid. 

The  men-servants,  of  whom  Mr.  Romer  kept  two, 
always  avoided,  with  scrupulous  refinement,  these 
unusual  gatherings.  They  discoursed,  in  the  pantry, 
upon  their  mistress'  dubious  behavior,  and  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  she  was  no  more  of  a  "real  lady" 
than  her  visitor  from  America  was  a  "real  gentle- 
man." 

Dangelis  made  some  new  and  amazing  discovery 
in   Susan   Romer's   character   every   day.      In   all   his 


IDYLLIC   PLEASURES  115 

experiences  from  San  Francisco  to  New  York,  and 
from  Paris  to  Vienna,  he  had  never  encountered 
anything  in  the  least  resembling  her. 

He  could  never  make  out  how  deep  her  apparent 
simplicity  went,  nor  how  ingrained  and  innate  was 
her  lethargic  submission  to  circumstances.  Nothing 
in  the  woman  shocked  him;  neither  her  vulgarity 
nor  her  grossness.  And  as  for  her  sly,  sleepy,  feline 
malice,  he  loved  to  excite  and  provoke  it,  as  he  would 
have  loved  to  have  excited  a  slumbering  animal  in  a 
cage.  He  delighted  in  the  way  she  wrinkled  up  her 
eyes.  He  delighted  in  the  way  she  smacked  her  lips 
over  her  food.  He  loved  watching  her  settling  her- 
self to  sleep  in  her  high-backed  Sheraton  chair  in 
the  kitchen,  or  in  her  more  modern  lounge  in  the 
great  entrance  hall.  He  never  grew  tired  of  asking 
her  questions  about  the  various  personages  of  Nevil- 
ton,  their  relation  to  Mr.  Romer,  and  Mr.  Romer's 
relation  to  them.  He  used  to  watch  her  sometimes, 
as  in  drowsy  sensual  enjoyment  she  would  bask  in 
the  hot  sunshine  on  the  terrace,  or  drift  in  her  slow 
stealthy  manner  about  the  garden-paths,  as  if  she 
were  a  great  fascinating  tame  puma.  He  made  end- 
less sketches  of  her,  in  his  little  note-books,  some  of 
them  of  the  most  fantastic,  and  even  Rabelaisean 
character.  He  had  certainly  never  anticipated  just 
this,  when  he  accepted  the  shrewd  financier's  invita- 
tion to  his  Elizabethan  home.  And  if  Susan  Romer 
delighted  him,  Gladys  Romer  absolutely  bewitched 
him.  He  treated  her  as  if  she  were  no  grown-up 
young  lady,  but  a  romping  and  quite  unscrupulous 
child;  and  the  wily  Gladys,  quickly  perceiving  how 
greatly  he  was  pleased  by  any  naive  display  of  youth- 


116  WOOD  AND   STONE 

ful  malice,  or  greed,  or  sensuality,  or  vanity,  took  good 
care  to  put  no  rein  upon  herself  in  the  expression  of 
her  primitive  emotions. 

It  was  with  Lacrima  that  Ralph  Dangelis  found  him- 
self on  ground  that  was  less  secure,  but  in  the  genial 
aplomb  of  his  all-embracing  good-fellowships,  it  was 
only  by  degrees  that  he  became  conscious  even  of  this. 
He  found  the  place  not  only  extraordinarily  harmoni- 
ous to  his  general  temper,  but  extremely  inspiring  to 
his  imaginative  work.  It  only  needed  the  securing  of 
a  few  mechanical  contrivances,  a  studio,  for  instance, 
with  a  north-light,  to  have  made  his  sojourn  at  Nevil- 
ton  one  of  the  most  prolific  summers,  in  regard  to 
his  art,  that  he  had  experienced  since  his  student  days 
in  Rome.  He  began  vaguely  to  wish  in  the  depths 
of  his  mind  that  it  were  possible  for  these  good 
Romers  to  bestow  upon  him  in  perpetuity  some 
pleasant  airy  chamber  in  their  great  house,  so  that  he 
might  not  have  to  lose,  for  many  summers  to  come, 
these  agreeable  and  scandalous  gossippings  w4th  the 
mother  and  these  still  more  agreeable  flirtations  with 
the  delicious  daughter.  This  bold  and  fantastic  idea 
was  less  a  fabric  of  airy  speculation  than  might  have 
been  supposed;  for  if  the  American  was  enchanted 
with  his  entertainers,  his  entertainers,  at  any  rate  the 
mother  and  the  daughter,  were  extremely  well  pleased 
with  him.  The  free  sweep  of  his  capacious  sympathy, 
the  absence  in  him  of  any  punctilious  gentility,  the 
large  and  benignant  atmosphere  he  diffused  round 
him,  and  the  mixture  of  cynical  realism  with  con- 
siderate chivalry,  were  things  so  different  from  any- 
thing they  had  been  accustomed  to,  that  they  both 
of  them  would  willingly  have  offered  him  a  suite  of 


IDYLLIC   PLEASURES  117 

apartments  in  the  house,  if  he  could  have  accepted 
such  an  offer. 

Dangelis  was  particularly  lucky  in  arriving  at 
Nevilton  at  this  especial  moment.  An  abnormally 
retarded  spring  had  led  to  the  most  delicious  over- 
lapping in  the  varied  flora  of  the  place.  Though  June 
had  begun,  there  were  still  many  flowers  lingering  in 
the  shadier  spots  of  the  woods  and  ditches,  which 
properly  belonged  not  only  to  May,  but  to  very 
early  May.  Certain,  even,  of  April's  progeny  had 
not  completely  faded  from  the  late-flowering  lanes. 

The  artist  found  himself  surrounded  by  a  riotous 
revel  of  leafy  exuberance.  The  year's  "primal  burst" 
had  occurred,  not  in  reluctant  spasmodic  fits  and 
starts,  as  is  usual  in  our  intermittent  fine  weather, 
but  in  a  grand  universal  outpouring  of  the  earth's 
sap.  His  imagination  answered  spontaneously  to 
this  appeal,  and  his  note-books  were  speedily  filled 
with  hurried  passionate  sketches,  made  at  all  hours 
of  the  long  bright  days,  and  full  of  suggestive  charm. 
One  particularly  lovely  afternoon  the  American  found 
himself  wandering  slowly  up  the  hill  from  the  little 
Nevilton  station,  after  a  brief  excursion  to  Yeoborough 
in  search  of  pigments  and  canvas.  He  was  hoping 
to  take  advantage  of  this  auspicious  stirring  of  his 
imaginative  senses,  by  entering  upon  some  more 
important  and  more  continuous  work.  The  Nevilton 
ladies  had  assured  him  that  it  would  be  quite  impos- 
sible to  find  in  the  little  town  the  kind  of  materials  he 
needed;  and  he  was  returning  in  high  spirits  to  assure 
them  that  he  had  completely  falsified  their  prediction. 
He  suspected  Gladys  of  having  invented  this  difficulty 
with  a   view  to  confining  his   labours   to   such   easily 


118  WOOD   AND   STONE 

shared  sketching-trips  as  she  might  accompany  him 
upon,  but  though  the  fascination  of  the  romping  and 
toying  girl  still  retained,  and  had  even  increased,  its 
power  over  him;  he  was,  in  this  case,  impelled  and 
driven  by  a  force  stronger  and  more  dominant  than 
any  sensual  attraction.  He  was  in  a  better  mood  for 
painting  than  he  had  ever  been  in  his  life,  and  nothing 
could  interfere  with  his  resolution  to  exploit  this  mood 
to  its  utmost  limit.  With  the  most  precious  of  his 
newly  purchased  materials  under  his  arm  and  the  more 
bulky  ones  promised  him  that  same  evening,  Dangelis, 
as  he  drifted  slowly  up  the  sunny  road  chatting 
amicably  with  such  rural  marketers  as  overtook  him, 
felt  in  a  peculiarly  harmonious  temper. 

He  had  recently,  in  the  western  cities  of  the  States, 
won  a  certain  fiercely  contested  notoriety  in  the  art 
of  portrait-painting,  an  art  which  he  had  come  more 
and  more  to  practise  according  to  the  very  latest 
of  those  daring  modern  theories,  which  are  summed 
up  sometimes  under  the  not  very  illuminative  title 
of  Post-impressionism,  and  he  had,  during  the  last 
few  days,  indulged  in  a  natural  and  irresistible  wish 
to  associate  this  new  departure  with  his  personal 
experiences  at  Nevilton. 

Gossiping  nonchalantly  with  the  village-wives,  as 
he  ascended  the  dusty  road,  by  the  ^^carage  wall,  his 
thoughts  ran  swiftly  over  the  motley-coloured  map  of 
his  past  life,  and  the  deviating  track  across  the  world 
which  he  had  been  led  to  follow.  He  congratulated 
himself  in  his  heart,  as  he  indulged  in  easy  persiflage 
with  his  fellow-wayfarers,  upon  his  consistent  freedom 
from  everything  that  might  choke  or  restrain  the 
freedom  of  his  will. 


IDYLLIC   PLEASURES  119 

How  fortunate,  how  incredibly  fortunate,  that  he 
should,  in  weather  Hke  this,  and  in  so  abounding  a 
mood  of  creative  energy,  be  completely  his  own 
master,  except  for  the  need  of  propitiating  two  naive 
and  amusing  women!  He  entertained  himself  by  the 
thought  of  how  little  they  really  knew  him,  —  these 
friendly  Romers  —  how  little  they  sounded  his  real 
purposes,  his  essential  feelings!  To  them  no  doubt, 
he  was  no  more  than  he  was  to  these  excellent  vil- 
lagers, —  a  tall,  fair,  slouching,  bony  figure,  with  a 
face,  —  if  they  went  as  far  as  his  face,  —  massively 
heavy  and  irregular,  with  dreamy  humorous  eyes  and 
a  mouth  addicted  to  nervous  twitching. 

A  clump  of  dandelions,  obtruding  their  golden 
indifference  to  human  drama,  into  the  dust  of  the 
road  at  his  feet,  mixed  oddly,  at  that  moment,  in 
these  obscure  workings  of  his  brain,  with  a  sort  of 
savage  caress  of  self-complacent  congratulation  which 
he  suddenly  bestowed  on  his  interior  self;  as,  be- 
neath his  pleasant  chatter  with  his  rural  companions, 
he  thought  how  imperturbable,  how  ferocious,  his 
secret  egoism  was,  and  how  well  he  concealed  it 
under  his  indolent  good-nature!  He  had  passed  now 
the  entrance  to  the  vicarage  garden,  and  in  the 
adjoining  field  he  observed  with  a  curious  thrill  of 
psychic  sympathy  the  tenacious  grip  with  which  a 
viciously-knotted  ash-tree  held  to  the  earth  with 
its  sturdy  roots.  Out-walked  at  last  by  all  the  other 
returned  travellers,  Dangelis  glanced  without  pausing 
down  the  long  Italianated  avenue,  at  the  end  of 
which  shone  red,  in  the  afternoon  sun,  the  mullioned 
windows  of  the  great  house.  He  preferred  to  prolong 
his  stroll,  by  taking  the  circuitous  way,  round  by  the 


120  WOOD  AND   STOXE 

village.  He  knew  the  expression  of  that  famous 
west  front  too  well  now,  to  linger  in  admiration  over 
its  picturesque  repose  in  the  afternoon  sunshine. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  a  slight  chill  of  curious  antipathy 
crossed  his  consciousness  as  he  quickened  his  steps. 

Happily  situated  though  he  was,  in  his  pleasant 
lodging  beneath  that  capacious  roof,  the  famous 
edifice  itself  had  not  altogether  won  his  affection.  The 
thing  suggested  to  his  wayward  and  prairie-nurtured 
soul,  a  stately  product  rather  of  convention  than  of 
life.  He  felt  oddly  conscious  of  it  as  something  sym- 
bolic of  what  would  be  always  intrinsically  opposed 
to  him,  of  what  would  willingly,  if  it  were  able,  sup- 
press him  and  render  him  helpless. 

Dangelis  belonged  to  quite  a  different  type  of 
trans-Atlantic  visitor,  from  the  kind  that  hover  with 
exuberant  delight  over  everything  that  is  "old"  or 
"English"  or  "European."  He  was  essentially  rather 
an  artist  than  an  antiquary,  rather  an  energetic 
workman  than  an  epicurean  sentimentalist.  Once  out 
of  sight  of  the  Elizabethan  pile,  the  curious  chill 
passed  from  his  mind,  and  as  he  approached  the  first 
cottages  of  the  village  he  looked  round  for  more 
reassuring  tokens.  Such  tokens  were  not  lacking. 
They  crowded  in  upon  him,  indeed,  from  every  side. 
Stopping  for  a  moment,  ere  the  houses  actually 
blocked  his  view,  and  leaning  over  a  gate  which 
faced  westward,  Dangelis  looked  out  across  the  great 
Somersetshire  plain,  to  which  Leo's  Hill  and  Nevilton 
Mount  serve  the  office  of  watchful  sentinels.  Tall, 
closely-clipped  elm-trees,  bordering  every  field,  gave 
the  country  on  this  side  of  the  horizon,  a  queer  arti- 
ficial  look,    as   if   it    had   been   one   huge   landscape- 


IDYLLIC   PLEASURES  121 

garden,  arranged  according  to  the  arbitrary  pleasure 
of  some  fantastic  artist,  whose  perversion  it  was  to 
reduce  every  natural  extravagance  to  the  meticulous 
rhythm  of  his  own  formal  taste. 

This  impression,  the  impression  of  something  willed 
and  intentional  in  the  very  formation  of  Nature,  gave 
our  eccentric  onlooker  a  caressing  and  delicate  pleas- 
ure, a  sense  as  of  a  thing  peculiarly  harmonious  to  his 
own  spirit.  The  formality  of  Nevilton  House  de- 
pressed and  chilled  him,  but  the  formality  of  age- 
trimmed  trees  and  hedges  liberated  his  imagination, 
as  some  perverse  work  of  a  Picasso  or  a  Matisse  might 
have  done.  He  wondered  vaguely  to  himself  what 
was  the  precise  cause  of  the  psychic  antipathy  which 
rendered  him  so  cold  to  the  grandeur  of  Elizabethan 
architecture,  while  the  other  features  of  his  present 
dwelling  remained  so  attractive,  and  he  came  to  the 
temporary  solution,  as  he  took  his  arms  from  the 
top  of  the  gate,  that  it  was  because  that  particular 
kind  of  magnificence  expressed  the  pride  of  a  class, 
rather  than  of  an  individual,  whereas  he  himself  was 
all  for  individual  self-assertion  in  everything  —  in 
everything!  The  problem  was  still  teasing  him,  when, 
a  few  minutes  later,  he  passed  the  graceful  tower  of 
St.  Catharine's  church. 

This  strangely  organic,  this  curiously  anonymous 
Gothic  art  —  was  not  this  also,  the  suppression  of 
the  individual,  in  the  presence  of  something  larger 
and  deeper,  of  something  that  demanded  the  sacri- 
fice of  mere  transient  personality,  as  the  very  condi- 
tion of  its  appearance?  At  all  events  it  was  less 
humiliating,  less  of  an  insult,  to  the  claims  of  the 
individual  will,  when  the  thing  was  done  in  the  inter- 


122  WOOD   AND   STOXE 

est  of  religion,  than  when  it  was  done  in  the  interests 
of  a  class.  The  impersonality  of  the  former,  re- 
sembled the  impersonality  of  rocks  and  flowers;  that 
of  the  latter,  the  impersonality  of  fashions  in  dress. 

"But  away  with  them  both!"  muttered  Dangelis 
to  himself,  as  he  strode  viciously  down  the  central 
street  of  Nevilton.  The  American  was  in  very  truth, 
and  he  felt  he  was,  for  all  his  artistic  receptivity,  an 
alien  and  a  foreigner  in  the  midst  of  these  time-worn 
traditions.  In  spite  of  their  beauty  he  knew  himself 
profoundly  opposed  to  them.  They  excited  fibres  of 
opposition  and  rebellion  in  him,  that  went  down  to 
the  very  depths  of  his  nature.  If,  allowing  full  scope 
to  our  speculative  fancy  —  and  who  knows  upon 
what  occult  truths  these  wandering  thoughts  some- 
times stumble.''  —  we  image  the  opposing  "streams  of 
tendency,"  in  Nevilton  village,  as  focussed  and  summed 
up,  in  the  form  of  the  Gothic  church,  guarded  by  the 
consecrated  Mount,  and  the  form  of  the  Elizabethan 
house,  owned  by  the  owner  of  Leo's  Hill,  it  is  clear 
that  this  wanderer,  from  the  shores  of  the  Great 
Lakes,  was  equally  antagonistic  to  both  of  them.  He 
brought  into  the  place  a  certain  large  and  elemental 
indifference.  To  the  child  of  the  winds  and  storms 
of  the  Great  Lakes,  as,  so  one  might  think,  to  the 
high  fixed  stars  themselves,  this  local  strife  of  opposed 
mythologies  must  needs  appear  a  matter  of  but  trifling 
importance. 

The  American  was  not  permitted,  on  this  occasion, 
to  pursue  his  meditations  uninterrupted  to  the  end 
of  his  walk.  Half-way  down  the  south  drive  he  was 
overtaken  by  Gladys,  returning  from  the  village 
post-oflBce.      "Hullo!     How   have    you   got   on.'*"   she 


IDYLLIC   PLEASURES  123 

cried.  "I  suppose  you'll  believe  me  another  time? 
You  know  now,  I  expect,  how  impossible  the  Yeo- 
borough  shops  are!" 

"On  the  contrary,"  said  the  artist  smiling,  "I  have 
found  them  extremely  good.  Perha])s  I  am  less 
exacting,"  he  added,  "than  some  artists." 

"I  am  exacting  in  everything,"  said  Gladys,  "es- 
pecially in  people.  That  is  why  I  get  on  so  well 
with  you.     You  are  a  new  experience  to  me." 

Dangelis  made  no  reply  to  this  and  they  paced  in 
silence  under  the  tall  exotic  cedars  until  they  reached 
the  house. 

"There's  mother!"  cried  the  girl,  pushing  open  the 
door  that  led  into  the  kitchen  premises,  and  pulling 
the  American  unceremoniously  in  after  her.  They 
found  Mrs.  Romer  before  a  large  oak  table,  set  in 
the  mullioned  window  of  the  house-keeper's  little 
room.  She  was  arranging  flowers  for  the  evening's 
dinner-table.  The  plump  lady  welcomed  Dangelis 
effusively  and  made  him  sit  down  upon  a  Queen  Anne 
settle  of  polished  mahogany  which  stood  in  the  corner 
of  the  fire-place.  Gladys  remained  standing,  a  tall 
softly-moulded  figure,  appealingly  girlish  in  her  light 
muslin  frock.  She  swayed  slightly,  backwards  and 
forwards,  pouting  capriciously  at  her  mother's  naive 
discourse,  and  loosening  her  belt  with  both  her  hands. 

"Why  should  you  ever  go  back  to  America?"  Mrs. 
Romer  was  saying.  "Don't  go,  dear  Mr.  Dangelis. 
Stay  with  us  here  till  the  end  of  the  summer.  The 
Red  room  in  the  south  passage  was  getting  quite 
damp  before  you  came.  Please,  don't  go!  Gladys 
and  I  are  getting  so  fond  of  you,  so  used  to  your 
ways  and  all  that.     Aren't  we  Gladys?     Why  should 


124  WOOD   AND   STONE 

you  go?  There  are  plenty  of  lovely  bits  of  scenery 
about  here.  And  you  can  have  a  studio  built!  Yes! 
Why  not?  Couldn't  he,  Gladys?  The  lumber-room  in 
the  south  passage  —  opposite  where  Lily  sleeps  — 
would  make  a  splendid  place  for  painting  in  hot 
weather.  I  suppose  a  north  light,  though,  would  be 
impossible.  But  some  kind  of  glass  arrangement 
might  be  made.  I  must  talk  to  Mortimer  about  it. 
I  suppose  you  rich  Americans  think  nothing  of 
calling  in  builders  and  putting  up  studios.  I  suppose 
you  do  it  everywhere.  America  must  be  full  of 
north  light.  But  perhaps  something  of  the  kind  could 
be  done.  I  really  don't  understand  architecture,  but 
Mortimer  does.  Mortimer  understands  everything. 
I  daresay  it  wouldn't  be  very  expensive.  It  would 
only  mean  buying  the  glass." 

The  admirable  woman,  whose  large  fair  face  and 
double  chin  had  grown  quite  creased  and  shiny 
with  excitement,  turned  at  last  to  her  daughter  who 
had  been  coquettishly  and  dreamily  staring  at  the 
smiling  artist. 

"Why  don't  you  say  something,  Gladys?  You  don't 
want  Mr.   Dangelis  to  go,   any   more  than  I  do,  do 

you?" 

The  girl  moved  to  the  table  and  picking  up  a  large 
peony  stuck  it  wantonly  and  capriciously  into  her 
dress.  "I  have  my  confirmation  lesson  tonight," 
she  said.  "I  must  be  at  Mr.  Clavering's  by  six. 
What's  the  time  now?"  She  looked  at  the  clock  on 
the  mantel-piece.  "Why,  its  nearly  half-past  four! 
I  wonder  where  Lacrima  is.  Never  mind!  We  must 
have  tea  without  her.  I'm  sure  Mr.  Dangelis  is 
dying  for  tea.     Let's  have  it  out  on  the  terrace." 


IDYLLIC   PLEASURES  125 

"At  six?"  repeated  Mrs.  Romer.  "I  thought  the 
class  was  always  at  seven.  It  was  given  out  to  be 
seven.     I  heard  the  notice  on  Sunday." 

Gladys  looked  smilingly  at  the  American  as  she 
answered  her  mother.  "Don't  be  silly,  dear.  You 
know  Mr.  Clavering  takes  me  separately  from  the 
others.     The  others  are  all  village  people." 

Mrs.  Romer  rose  from  her  seat  with  something 
between  a  sigh  and  a  chuckle.  "I  hadn't  the  least 
idea,"  she  said,  "that  he  took  you  separately.  You've 
been  going  to  these  classes  for  three  weeks  and  you've 
never  mentioned  such  a  thing  until  this  moment. 
Well  —  never  mind!  I  expect  Mr.  Dangelis  will  not 
object  to  strolling  down  the  drive  with  you.  You'd 
better  both  get  ready  for  tea  now.  I'll  go  and  tell 
somebody  we  want  it." 

She  had  no  sooner  departed  than  Gladys  began  flick- 
ing the  American,  in  playful  childish  sport,  with  a 
spray  of  early  roses.  He  entered  willingly  into  the 
game,  and  a  pleasant  tussle  ensued  between  them 
as  he  sought  to  snatch  the  flowers  out  of  her  hands. 
She  resisted  but  he  pushed  her  backwards,  and  held 
her  imprisoned  against  the  edge  of  the  table,  teasing 
her  as  if  she  were  a  romping  child  of  twelve. 

"So  you  are  going  to  these  classes  alone,  are  you?" 
he  said.  "I  see  that  your  English  clergymen  are 
allowed  extraordinary  privileges.  I  expect  you  cause 
him  a  good  deal  of  agitation,  poor  dear  man,  if  you 
flirt  with  him  as  shamelessly  as  you  do  with  me. 
Well,  go  ahead!  I'm  not  responsible  for  you.  In 
fact  I'm  all  for  spurring  you  on.  It'll  amuse  me  to 
see  what  happens.  But  no  doubt  all  sorts  of  things 
have  happened  already!     I  suppose  you've  made  Mr. 


126  ^YOOD   AND   STOXE 

Clavering  desperately  in  love  with  you.  I  expect 
you  persecute  him  unmercifully.  I  know  you.  I 
know  your  ways."  He  playfully  pinched  her  arm. 
"But  go  on.  It'll  be  an  amusement  to  me  to  watch 
the  result  of  all  this.  I  like  being  a  sort  of  sympa- 
thetic onlooker,  in  these  things.  I  like  the  idea  of 
hiding  behind  the  scenes,  and  watching  the  tricks  of 
a  naughty  little  flirt  like  you,  set  upon  troubling  the 
mind  of  a  poor  harmless  minister." 

The  reply  made  by  the  daughter  of  the  House  to 
this  challenge  was  a  simple  but  effective  one.  Like 
a  mischievous  infant  caught  in  some  unpardonable 
act,  she  flagrantly  and  shamelessly  put  out  her 
tongue  at  him.  Long  afterwards,  with  curious  feel- 
ings, Dangelis  recalled  this  gesture.  He  associated 
it  to  the  end  of  his  life  with  the  indefinable  smell  of 
cut  flowers,  with  their  stalks  in  water,  and  the 
pungency  of  peony-petals. 

Tea,  when  it  reached  our  friends  upon  the  stately 
east  terrace,  proved  a  gay  and  festive  meal.  The 
absence  of  the  reserved  and  nervous  Italian,  and  also 
of  the  master  of  Nevilton,  rendered  all  three  persons 
more  completely  and  freely  at  their  ease,  than  they 
had  ever  been  since  the  American's  first  appearance. 
The  grass  was  being  cut  at  that  corner  of  the  park, 
and  the  fresh  delicious  smell,  full  of  the  very  sap  of 
the  earth,  poured  in  upon  them  across  the  sunny 
flower  beds.  The  chattering  of  young  starlings,  the 
cawing  of  young  rooks,  blended  pleasantly  with  the 
swish  of  the  scythes  and  the  laughter  of  the  hay- 
makers; and  from  the  distant  village  floated  softly 
to  their  ears  all  those  vague  and  characteristic  sounds 
which   accompany   the   close   of   a   hot   day,  and   the 


IDYI.LIC   PLEASURES  127 


release  from  labour  of  men  and  beasts.  As  they 
devoured  their  bread  and  butter  with  that  naive 
greediness  which  is  part  of  the  natural  atmosphere 
of  this  privileged  hour  in  an  English  home,  the  three 
friends  indicated  by  their  playful  temper  and  gay 
discourse  that  they  each  had  secret  reasons  for  self- 
congratulation. 

Dangelis  felt  an  exquisite  sense  of  new  possibili- 
ties in  his  art,  drawn  from  the  seduction  of  these 
surroundings  and  the  frank  animalism  of  his  cheer- 
ful companions.  He  sat  between  them,  watching 
their  looks  and  ways,  very  much  as  Rubens  or 
Franz  Hals  might  have  watched  the  rounded  bosoms 
and  spacious  gestures  of  two  admirable  burgess- 
women  in  some  country  house  of  Holland. 

Mrs.  Romer,  below  her  garrulous  chatter,  nourished 
fantastic  and  rose-colored  dreams,  in  which  inesti- 
mable piles  of  dollars,  and  limitless  rows  of  golden 
haired  grand-children,  played  the  predominant  part. 
Gladys,  flushed  and  excited,  gave  herself  up  to  the 
imagined  exercise  of  every  sort  of  wanton  and  wilful 
power,  with  the  desire  for  which  the  flowing  sap  of 
the  year's  exuberance  filled  her  responsive  veins. 

Tea  over,  Dangelis  suggested  that  he  should  accom- 
pany the  girl  to  Mr.  Clavering's  door. 

"You  needn't  be  there  for  three  quarters  of  an 
hour,"  he  said,  "let's  go  across  to  the  mill  copse 
first,  and  see  if  there  are  any  blue-bells  left." 

Gladys  willingly  consented,  and  Susan  Romer, 
remaining  pensive  in  her  low  cane  chair,  watched 
their  youthful  figures  retreating  across  the  sunlit 
park  with  a  sigh  of  profound  thankfulness  addressed 
vaguely    and    obscurely    to    Omnipotence.      This    was 


128  WOOD   AND   STOXE 

indeed  the  sort  of  son-in-law  she  craved.  How  much 
more  desirable  than  that  reserved  and  haughty  young 
Ilminster!  Gladys  would  be,  three  times  over,  a 
fool  if  she  let  him  escape. 

A  few  minutes  later  the  artist  and  his  girl-friend 
reached  the  mill  spinney.  He  helped  her  over  the 
stream  and  the  black  thorn  hedge  without  too  much 
damage  to  her  frock  and  he  was  rewarded  for  his 
efforts  by  the  thrill  of  vibrating  pleasure  with  which 
she  plunged  her  hands  among  the  oozy  stalks  of  those 
ineffable  blue  flowers. 

"No  wonder  young  Hyacinth  was  too  beautiful 
to  live,"  he  remarked. 

"Shut  up,"  was  the  young  woman's  reply,  as  she 
breathlessly  stretched  herself  along  the  length  of  a 
fallen  branch,  and  endeavoured  to  reach  the  damp 
moist  stalks  and  cool  leaves  with  her  forehead  and  lips. 

"How  silly  it  is,  having  one's  hair  done  up,"  she 
cried  presently,  raising  herself  on  her  hands  from  her 
prone  position,  and  kicking  the  branch  viciously  with 
her  foot. 

"You'd  have  liked  me  with  my  hair  down,  Mr. 
Dangelis,"  she  continued.  "Lying  like  this,"  and  she 
once  more  embraced  the  fallen  bough,  "it  would 
have  got  mixed  up  with  all  those  blue-bells  and  then 
you    would    have    had    something    to    paint!" 

"Bad  girl!"  cried  the  artist  playfully,  switching 
her  lightly  with  a  willow  wand  from  which  he  had 
been  stripping  the  bark.  "I  would  have  made  you 
do  your  hair  up,  tight  round  your  head,  years  and 
years  ago." 

He  offered  her  his  hand  and  lifted  her  up.  Once  in 
possession  of  those  ardent  youthful  fingers,  he  seemed 


IDYLLIC   PLEASURES  129 

to  consider  himself  justified  in  retaining  them  and, 
as  the  girl  made  no  sign  of  dissent,  they  advanced 
hand  in  hand  through  the  thick  undergrowth. 

The  place  was  indeed  a  little  epitome  of  the  sea- 
son's prolific  growth.  Above  and  about  them,  elder- 
bushes  and  hazels  met  in  entangled  profusion;  while 
at  their  feet  the  marshy  soil  was  covered  with  a  mass 
of  moss  and  cool-rooted  leafy  plants.  Golden-green 
burdocks  grew  there,  and  dark  dog-mercury;  while 
mixed  with  aromatic  water-mint  and  ground  ivy, 
crowds  of  sturdy  red  campions  lifted  up  their  rose- 
coloured  heads.  The  undergrowth  was  so  thick,  and 
the  roots  of  the  willows  and  alders  so  betraying,  that 
over  and  over  again  he  had  to  make  a  path  for  her, 
and  hold  back  with  his  hand  some  threatening  withy- 
switch  or  prickly  thorn  branch,  that  appeared  likely 
to  invade  her  face  or  body. 

The  indescribable  charm  of  the  hour,  as  the  broken 
sunlight,  almost  horizontal  now,  threw  red  patches, 
like  the  blood  of  wounded  satyrs,  upon  tree-trunks 
and  mossy  stumps,  and  made  the  little  marsh-pools 
gleam  as  if  filled  with  fairy  wine,  found  its  com- 
pletest  expression  in  the  long-drawn  flute-music,  at 
the  same  time  frivolously  gay  and  exquisitely  sad,  of 
the  blackbird's  song.  An  angry  cuckoo,  crying  its 
familiar  cry  as  it  flew,  flapped  away  from  some 
hidden  perch,  just  above  their  heads. 

Not  many  more  black-bird's  notes  and  not  many 
more  cuckoo's  cries  would  that  diminutive  jungle 
hear,  before  the  great  mid-summer  silence  descended 
upon  it,  to  be  broken  only  by  the  less  magical 
sounds  of  the  later  season.  Nothing  but  the  aus- 
picious accident  of  the  extreme  lateness  of  the  spring 


130  WOOD   AND   STONE 

had  given  to  the  visitor  from  Ohio  these  revelations 
of  enchantment.  It  was  one  of  those  unequalled 
moments  when  the  earth  seems  to  breathe  out  from 
its  most  secret  heart  perfumes  and  scents  that  seem 
to  belong  to  a  more  felicitous  planet  than  our  planet, 
murmurs  and  voices  adapted  to  more  responsive  ears 
than  our  ears. 

It  was  doubtless,  so  Dangelis  thought,  on  such  an 
evening  as  this,  that  the  first  notion  of  the  presence 
in  such  places  of  beings  of  a  finer  and  yet  a  grosser 
texture  than  man's,  first  entered  the  imagination  of 
humanity.     In  such  a  spot  were  the  earth-gods  born. 

Many  feathered  things,  besides  black-birds  and 
cuckoos  abounded  in  the  mill  spinney. 

They  had  scarcely  reached  the  opposite  end  of  the 
little  wood,  when  with  a  sudden  cry  of  excitement 
and  a  quick  sinking  on  her  knees,  the  girl  turned  to 
him  with  a  young  thrush  in  her  hand.  It  was  big 
enough  to  be  capable  of  flying  and,  as  she  held  it  in 
her  soft  white  fingers,  it  struggled  desperately  and 
uttered  little  cries.  She  held  it  tightly  in  one  hand, 
and  with  the  other  caressed  its  ruffled  feathers, 
looking  sideways  at  her  companion,  as  she  did  so, 
with  dreamy,  half-shut,  voluptuous  eyes. 

"Little  darling,"  she  whispered.  And  then,  with 
a  breathless  gasp  in  her  voice,  —  "Kiss  its  head,  Mr. 
Dangelis.  It  can't  get  away."  He  stooped  over  her 
as  she  held  the  bird  up  to  him,  and  if  in  obeying  her 
he  brushed  with  his  lips  fingers  as  well  as  feathers, 
the  accident  was  not  one  he  could  bring  himself  to 
regret. 

"It  can't  get  away,"  she  repeated,  in  a  low  soft 
murmur. 


IDYLLIC   PLEASURES  131 


The  bird  did,  however,  get  away,  a  moment  after- 
wards, and  went  fluttering  off  through  the  brush- 
wood, with  that  delicious,  awkward  violence,  which 
young  thrushes  share  with  so  many  other  youthful 
things. 

In  the  deep  ditch  which  they  now  had  to  cross,  the 
artist  caught  sight  of  a  solitary  half-faded  primrose, 
the  very  last,  perhaps,  of  its  delicate  tribe.  He 
showed  it  to  Gladys,  gently  smoothing  away,  as  he 
did  so,  the  heavy  leaves  which  seemed  to  be  over- 
shadowing its  last  days  of  life. 

The  girl  pushed  him  aside  impetuously,  and  plucking 
the  faded  flower  deliberately  thrust  it  into  her  mouth. 

"I  love  eating  them,"  she  cried,  "I  used  to  do  it 
when  I  was  ever  so  little  and  I  do  it  still  when  I  am 
alone.     You've  no  idea  how  nice  they  taste!" 

At  that  moment  they  heard  the  sound  of  the  church 
clock  striking  six. 

"Quick!"  cried  Gladys.  "Mr.  Clavering  wiU  be 
waiting.      He'll  be  cross  if  I'm  too  dreadfully  late." 

They  emerged  from  the  wood  and  followed  the 
grass-grown  lane,  round  by  the  small  mill-pond. 
Crossing  the  park  once  more,  they  entered  the  vil- 
lage by  the  Yeoborough  road. 

"What  a  girl!"  said  Dangelis  to  himself,  in  a  voice 
of  unmitigated  admiration,  as  he  held  open  for  her, 
at  last,  the  little  gate  of  the  old  vicarage  garden, 
and  waved  his  good-bye. 

"What  a  girl!  Heaven  help  that  unfortunate  Mr. 
Clavering!  If  he's  as  susceptible  as  most  of  these 
young  Englishmen,  she'll  make  havoc  of  his  poor 
heart.  Will  he  read  the  'Imitation'  with  her,  I 
wonder.''" 


132  WOOD   AND   STONE 

He  strolled  slowly  back,  the  way  they  had  come, 
the  personality  of  the  insidious  Gladys  pressing  less 
and  less  heavily  upon  him  as  his  thought  reverted 
to  his  painting.  He  resolved  that  he  would  throw  all 
these  recent  impressions  together  in  some  large  and 
sumptuous  picture,  that  should  give  to  these  modern 
human  figures  something  of  the  ample  suggestion  and 
noble  aplomb,  the  secret  of  which  seemed  to  have 
been  lost  to  the  world  with  the  old  Flemish  and 
Venetian  masters. 

What  in  his  soul  he  vaguely  imaged  as  his  task, 
was  an  attempt  to  eliminate  all  mystic  and  symbolic 
attitudes  from  his  works,  and  to  catch,  in  their  place, 
if  the  inspiration  came  to  him,  something  of  the 
lavish  prodigality,  superbly  material,  and  yet  pos- 
sessed of  ineffable  vistas,  of  the  large  careless  evoca- 
tions of  nature  herself. 

His  imaginative  purpose,  as  it  defined  itself  more 
and  more  clearly  in  his  mind,  during  his  solitary 
return  through  the  evening  light,  seemed  to  imply  an 
attempted  reproduction  of  those  aspects  of  the  human 
drama,  in  such  a  place  as  this,  which  carried  upon 
their  surface  the  air  of  things  that  could  not  happen 
otherwise,  and  which,  in  their  large  inevitableness, 
over-brimmed  and  over-flowed  all  traditional  dis- 
tinctions. He  would  have  liked  to  have  given,  in 
this  way,  to  the  figures  of  Gladys  and  her  mother, 
something  of  the  superb  non-moral  "insouciance," 
springing,  like  the  movements  of  animals  and  the 
fragrance  of  plants,  out  of  the  bosom  of  an  earth 
innocent  of  both  introspection  and  renunciation,  which 
one  observes  in  the  forms  of  Attic  sculpture,  or  in 
the  creations  of  Venetian  colourists.     Below  the  high 


IDYLLIC   PLEASURES  133 

ornamental  wall  of  Nevilton  garden  he  paused  a 
moment  before  entering  the  little  postern-gate,  to 
admire  the  indescribable  greenness  and  luxuriousness 
of  the  heavy  grass  devoted  in  this  place,  not  to  hay- 
makers but  to  cattle.  There  was  a  sort  of  poetry, 
he  humorously  told  himself,  even  about  the  great 
black  heaps  of  cow-dung  which  alternated  here  with 
the  golden  clumps  of  drowsy  buttercups.  They  also, 
—  why  not?  —  might  be  brought  into  the  kind  of 
picture  he  visioned,  just  as  Veronese  brought  his 
mongrels  and  curs  to  the  very  feet  of  the  Saviour! 

Dangelis  lifted  his  eyes,  to  where,  through  a  gap  in 
the  leafy  uplands,  the  more  distant  hills  were  visible. 
He  could  make  out  clearly,  in  the  rich  purple  light, 
the  long  curving  lines  of  the  Gorton  downs,  as  they 
melted,  little  by  little,  in  a  floating  lake  of  aerial 
blue-grey  vapour,  the  exhalation  of  the  great  valley's 
day-long  breathing. 

He  could  even  mark,  at  the  end  of  the  Gorton 
range  —  and  the  sight  of  it  gave  him  a  thrilling 
sense  of  the  invincible  continuity  of  life  in  these 
regions  —  the  famous  tree-crested  circle  of  Gadbury 
Gamp,  the  authentic  site  of  the  Arthurian  Gamelot. 

What  a  lodging  this  Nevilton  was,  to  pass  one's 
days  in,  to  work  in,  and  to  love  and  dream!  What 
enchantments  were  all  around  him!  What  memories! 
What  dumb  voices! 


CHAPTER   VIII 
THE   MYTHOLOGY  OF  SACRIFICE 

JUNE,  in  Nevilton,  that  summer,  seemed  debarred 
by  some  strange  interdiction  from  regaining  its 
normal   dampness   and   rainy   discomfort. 

It  continued  unnaturally  hot  and  dry  —  so  dry,  that 
though  the  hay-harvest  was  still  in  full  session,  the 
farmers  were  growing  seriously  anxious  and  impatient 
for  the  long-delayed  showers.  It  had  been,  as  we 
have  already  noted,  an  unusual  season.  Not  only 
were  there  so  many  blue-bells  lingering  in  the  shadowy 
places  in  the  woods,  but  among  the  later  flowers  there 
were  curious  over-lappings. 

The  little  milk-wort  blossoms,  for  instance,  on  Leo's 
Hill,  were  overtaken,  before  they  perished,  by  prema- 
ture out-croppings  of  yellow  trefoil  and  purple  thyme. 

The  walnut-trees  had  still  something  left  of  their 
spring  freshness,  while  in  the  hedges  along  the  roads, 
covered,  all  of  them,  with  a  soft  coating  of  thin 
white  dust,  the  wild-roses  and  the  feathery  grasses 
suggested  the  heart  of  the  year's  prime. 

It  was  about  eight  o'clock,  in  the  evening  of  a  day 
towards  the  end  of  the  second  week  in  this  unusual 
month,  that  Mr.  Hugh  Clavering  emerged  from  the 
entrance  of  the  Old  Vicarage  with  a  concentrated 
and  brooding  expression.  His  heart  was  indeed  rent 
and  torn  within  him  by  opposite  and  contrary  emo- 
tions.     With  one  portion   of  his   sensitive  nature  he 


MYTHOLOGY  OF  SACRIFICE      135 

was  craving  desperately  for  the  next  day's  interview 
with  Gladys;  with  the  other  portion  he  was  making 
firm  and  drastic  resolutions  to  avoid  it  and  escape 
from  it.  She  was  due  to  come  to  his  house  in  the 
afternoon  —  less  than  twenty-four  hours'  time  from 
this  actual  moment!  But  the  more  rigorous  half  of 
his  being  had  formed  the  austere  plan  of  sending  her 
a  note  in  the  morning  begging  her  to  appear,  along 
with  the  other  candidates,  at  a  later  hour.  He  had 
written  the  note  and  it  still  remained,  propped  up 
against  the  little  Arundel  print  of  the  Transfiguration, 
on  the  mantelpiece  of  his  room. 

He  went  up  the  street  with  bowed,  absorbed  head, 
hardly  noticing  the  salutations  of  the  easy  loiterers 
gathered  outside  the  door  of  the  Goat  and  Boy,  — 
the  one  of  Nevilton's  two  taverns  which  just  at 
present  attracted  the  most  custom.  Passing  between 
the  tavern  and  the  churchyard  wall,  he  pushed  open 
the  gate  leading  into  the  priory  farmyard,  and 
striding  hurriedly  through  it  began  the  ascent  of 
the  grassy  slope  at  the  base  of  Nevilton  Mount. 

The  wind  had  sunk  with  the  sinking  of  the  sun,  and 
an  immense  quietness  lay  like  a  catafalque  of  sacred 
interposition  on  the  fields  and  roofs  and  orchards  of 
the  valley.  A  delicious  smell  of  new-mown  grass 
blent  itself  with  the  heavy  perfume  of  the  great  white 
blossoms  of  the  elder  bushes  —  held  out,  like  so  many 
consecrated  chalices  to  catch  the  last  drops  of  soft- 
lingering  light,  before  it  faded  away, 

Hugh  Clavering  went  over  the  impending  situation 
again  and  again;  first  from  one  point  of  view,  then 
from  another.  The  devil  whispered  to  him  —  if  it 
were   the   devil  —  that   he   had   no   right   to   sacrifice 


136  AVOOD   AND   STONE 

his  spiritual  influence  over  this  disconcerting  pupil, 
out  of  a  mere  personal  embarrassment.  If  he  gave 
her  her  lesson  along  with  the  rest,  all  that  special 
eflFort  he  had  bestowed  upon  her  thought,  her  reading, 
her  understanding,  might  so  easily  be  thrown  away! 
She  was  diff'erent,  obviously  different,  from  the  simple 
village  maids,  and  to  put  her  now,  at  this  late  hour, 
with  the  confirmation  only  a  few  weeks  off,  into  the 
common  class,  would  be  to  undo  the  work  of  several 
months.  He  could  not  alter  his  method  with  the 
others  for  her  sake,  and  she  would  be  forced  to  listen 
to  teaching  which  to  her  would  be  elementary  and 
platitudinous.  He  would  be  throwing  her  back  in  her 
spiritual  development.  He  would  be  forcing  her  to  re- 
turn to  the  mere  alphabet  of  theology  at  the  moment 
when  she  had  just  begun  to  grow  interested  in  its 
subtle  and  beautiful  literature.  She  would  no  doubt 
be  both  bored  and  teased.  Her  nerves  would  be 
ruffled,  her  interest  diminished,  her  curiosity  dulled. 
She  would  be  angry,  too,  at  being  treated  exactly  as 
were  these  rustic  maidens  —  and  anger  was  not  a 
desirable  attribute  in  a  gentle  catechumen. 

Besides,  her  case  was  different  from  theirs  on  quite 
technical  grounds.  She  was  preparing  for  baptism  as 
well  as  confirmation,  and  he,  as  her  priest,  was 
bound  to  make  this,  the  most  essential  of  all  Christian 
sacraments,  the  head  and  front  of  his  instruction. 
It  was  hardly  to  the  point  to  say  that  the  other  girls 
knew  quite  as  little  of  the  importance  of  this  sacred 
rite  as  she  did.  His  explanations  of  it  to  them,  his 
emphasis  upon  the  blessing  it  had  already  been  to 
them,  would  be  necessarily  too  simple  and  childish 
for  her  Cjuicker,  maturer  understanding. 


MYTHOLOGY  OF  SACRIFICE      137 

As  he  reached  the  actual  beginning  of  the  woody 
eminence  and  turned  for  a  moment  to  inhale  the 
magical  softness  of  the  invading  twilight,  it  occurred 
to  him  that  from  a  logically  ecclesiastical  standpoint 
it  was  a  monstrous  thing  that  he  should  be  serenely 
and  coldly  debating  the  cutting  off  of  his  spiritual 
assistance  from  this  poor  thirsty  flower  of  the  heathen 
desert.  She  was  unbaptized  —  and  to  be  unbaptized, 
according  to  true  doctrine,  meant,  with  all  our 
Christian  opportunities,  a  definite  peril,  a  grave  and 
assured  peril,  to  her  immortal  soul.  Who  was  he 
that  he  should  play  with  such  a  formidable  risk  — 
such  a  risk  to  such  a  lamb  of  the  Great  Shepherd? 
It  was  quite  probable  —  he  knew  it  was  probable  — 
that,  angry  with  him  for  deserting  her  so  causelessly 
and  unreasonably,  she  would  refuse  to  go  further  in 
the  sacred  business.  She  would  say,  and  say  justly, 
that  since  the  affair  seemed  of  so  little  importance  to 
him  she  would  make  it  of  little  importance  to  herself. 
Suppose  he  were  to  call  in  some  colleague  from 
Yeoborough,  and  make  over  this  too  exciting 
neophyte  to  some  other  pastor  of  souls  —  would  she 
agree  to  such  a  casual  transference .f*  He  knew  well 
enough  that  she  would  not. 

How  unfortunate  it  was  that  the  peculiar  constitu- 
tion of  his  English  Church  made  these  things  so 
difficult!  The  individual  personality  of  the  priest 
mattered  so  much  in  Anglican  circles!  The  nobler 
self  in  him  envied  bitterly  at  that  moment  the  stricter 
and  yet  more  malleable  organization  of  the  Mother 
Church.  How  easy  it  would  be  were  he  a  Roman 
priest.  A  word  to  his  superior  in  office,  and  all 
would  arrange  itself!     It  was  impossible  to  imagine 


138  WOOD  AND   STONE 

himself  speaking  such  a  word  to  the  Right  Reverend 
the  Bishop  of  Glastonbury.  The  mere  idea  of  such 
a  thing,  in  our  England  of  discreet  propriety,  made 
him  smile  in  the  midst  of  his  distress. 

The  thought  of  the  Roman  Church  brought  into 
his  mind  the  plausible  figure  of  Mr.  Taxater.  How 
that  profound  and  subtle  humanist  would  chuckle 
over  his  present  dilemma!  He  would  probably 
regard  it  as  a  proper  and  ironical  punishment  upon 
him  for  his  heretical  assumption  of  this  traditional 
office. 

Tradition!  That  was  the  thing.  Tradition  and 
organization.  After  all,  it  was  only  to  Hugh  Claver- 
ing,  as  a  nameless  impersonal  priest  of  God,  that 
this  lovely  outcast  lamb  came  begging  to  be  enfolded. 
He  had  no  right  to  dally  with  the  question  at  all. 
There  was  no  question.  As  the  priest  of  Nevilton  it 
was  his  clear  pastoral  duty  to  give  every  possible 
spiritual  assistance  to  every  person  in  his  flock.  What 
if  the  pursuit  of  this  duty  did  throw  temptation  —  in- 
tolerable temptation  —  in  his  way?  His  business  was 
not  to  try  and  escape  from  such  a  struggle;  but  to  face 
it,  to  wrestle  with  it,  to  overcome  it!  He  was  like  a 
sentinel  at  his  post  in  a  great  war.  Was  he  to  leave 
his  post  and  retreat  to  the  rear  because  the  shells 
were   bursting   so   thickly   round   him? 

He  sat  down  on  the  grass  with  his  back  to  an 
ancient  thorn-tree  and  gazed  upon  the  tower  of  his 
beloved  church.  Would  he  not  be  false  to  that 
Church  — false  to  his  vows  of  ordination  —  if  he  were 
now  to  draw  back  from  the  firing-line  of  the  battle 
and  give  up  the  struggle  by  a  cowardly  retreat? 
Even  supposing  the  temptation  were  more    than  he 


MYTHOLOGY  OF  SACRIFICE      139 

could  endure  —  even  supposing  that  he  fell  —  would 
not  God  prefer  his  suffering  such  a  fall  with  his  face 
to  the  foe,  sword  in  hand,  rather  than  that  he  should 
be  saved,  his  consecrated  weapon  dropped  from  his 
fingers,  in  squalid  ignoble  flight? 

So  much  for  the  arguments  whispered  in  his  ear 
by  the  angel  of  darkness!  But  he  had  lately  been 
visited  by  another  angel  —  surely  not  of  darkness  — 
and  he  recalled  the  plausible  reasonings  of  the  great 
champion  of  the  papacy,  as  he  sat  in  that  pleasant 
window  sipping  his  wine.  Why  should  he  agitate 
himself  so  furiously  over  this  little  matter?  After 
all,  why  not  enjoy  the  pleasure  of  this  exquisite  being's 
society?  He  was  in  no  danger  of  doing  her  any  harm 
—  he  knew  Gladys  at  least  well  enough  by  now  to 
know  that!  —  and  what  harm  could  she  do  him? 
There  was  no  harm  in  being  attracted  irresistibly  to 
something  so  surpassingly  attractive!  Suppose  he 
fell  really  in  love  with  her?  Well!  There  was  no 
religious  rule  —  certainly  none  in  the  church  he 
belonged  to  —  against  falling  in  love  with  a  lovable 
and  desirable  girl.  But  it  was  not  a  matter  of  falling 
in  love.  He  knew  that  well  enough.  There  was 
very  little  of  the  romantic  or  the  sentimental  about 
the  feelings  she  aroused  in  him.  It  was  just  a  simple, 
sensuous,  amorous  attraction  to  a  provocative  and 
alluring  daughter  of  Eve.  Just  a  simple  sensuous 
attraction  —  so  simple,  so  natural,  as  to  be  almost 
"innocent,"  as  Mr.  Taxater  would  put  it. 

So  he  argued  with  himself;  but  the  Tower  of  the 
Church  opposite  seemed  to  invade  the  mists  of  these 
subtle  reasonings  with  a  stern  emphasis  of  clear-cut 
protest.     He    knew    well    enough    that    his    peculiar 


140  WOOD  AND   STONE 

nature  was  not  of  the  kind  that  might  be  called 
"sensuous"  or  "amorous,"  but  of  quite  a  different 
sort.  The  feelings  that  had  lately  been  excited  in 
him  were  as  concentrated  and  passionate  as  his 
feelings  for  the  altar  he  served.  They  were  indeed 
a  sort  of  temporal  inversion  of  this  sacred  ardour; 
or,  as  the  cynical  Mr.  Quincunx  in  his  blunt  manner 
would  have  expressed  it,  this  sacred  fire  itself  was 
only  a  form  taken  by  the  more  earthly  flame.  But 
a  "flame"  it  was,  —  not  any  gentle  toying  with  soft 
sensation,  —  a  flame,  a  madness,  a  vice,  an  obsession. 

In  no  ideal  sense  could  he  be  said  to  be  "in  love" 
with  Gladys.  He  was  intoxicated  with  her.  His 
senses  craved  for  her  as  they  might  have  craved  for 
some  sort  of  maddening  drug.  In  his  heart  of  hearts 
he  knew  well  that  the  emotion  he  felt  was  closely 
allied  to  a  curious  kind  of  antagonism.  He  thought 
of  her  with  little  tenderness,  with  no  gentle,  responsi- 
ble consideration.  Her  warm  insidious  charm  mad- 
dened and  perturbed  him.  It  did  not  diffuse  itself 
through  his  senses  like  a  tender  fragrance.  It  pro- 
voked, disturbed,  and  tantalized.  She  was  no  Rose 
of  Sharon,  to  be  worshipped  forever.  She  was  a  Rose 
of  Shiraz,  to  be  seized,  pressed  against  his  face,  and 
flung  aside!  The  appeal  she  made  to  him  was  an 
appeal  to  what  was  perverse,  vicious,  dangerous 
devastating,  in  his  nature.  To  call  his  attraction  to 
her  beauty  "innocent"  —  in  Mr.  Taxater's  phrase  — 
was  a  mere  hypercritical  white-washing  of  the  brutal 
fact. 

His  mind,  in  its  whirling  agitation,  conjured  up  the 
image  of  himself  as  married  to  her,  as  legally  and 
absolutely  possessed  of  her.    The  image  was  like  fuel  to 


MYTHOLOGY  OF  SACRIFICE      141 

his  flame,  but  it  brought  no  solution  of  the  problem. 
Marriage,  though  permitted  by  his  church,  was  as 
directly  contrary  to  his  own  interpretation  of  his  duty 
as  a  priest,  as  any  mortal  sin  might  be.  To  him  it 
would  have  been  a  mortal  sin  —  the  betrayal  of  his 
profoundest  ideal.  In  the  perversity  —  if  you  will  — 
of  his  ecclesiastical  conscience,  he  felt  towards  such  a 
solution  the  feeling  a  man  might  have  if  the  selling 
of  his  soul  were  to  be  a  thing  transacted  in  cold 
blood,  rather  than  in  the  tempest  of  the  moment. 
To  marry  Gladys  would  be  to  summon  the  very 
sacraments  of  his  church  to  bless  with  a  blasphemous 
consecration  his  treachery  to  their  appeal. 

Rent  and  torn  by  all  these  conflicting  thoughts,  the 
poor  clergyman  scrambled  once  more  to  his  feet, 
pushed  his  way  recklessly  through  the  intervening 
fence,  and  began  ascending  the  steep  side  of  the 
pyramidal  hill.  As  he  struggled  upward,  through 
burdocks,  nettles,  tall  grasses,  red-campion,  and 
newly  planted  firs,  his  soul  felt  within  him  as  if  it 
were  something  fleeing  from  an  invincible  pursuer. 
The  rank  aromatic  smell  of  torn  elder-boughs  and 
the  pungent  odour  of  trodden  ground-ivy  filled  his  nos- 
trils. His  clothes  were  sprinkled  with  feathery  seed- 
dust.  Closely-sticking  burs  clung  to  his  legs  and  arms. 
Outstretched  branches  switched  his  face  with  their 
leaves.  His  feet  stumbled  over  young  fern-fronds, 
bent  earthwards  in  their  elaborate  unsheathing. 

He  vaguely  associated  with  his  thoughts,  as  he 
struggled  on,  certain  queer  purple  markings  which 
he  noticed  on  the  stalks  of  the  thickly-grown  hem- 
locks, and  the  bind-weed,  which  entwined  itself  round 
many  of  the  slenderer  tree-stems,   became  a  symbol 


142 WOOD   AXD   STOXE 

of  the  power  that  assailed  him.  To  escape  —  to  be 
free!  This  was  the  burden  of  his  soul's  crying  as  he 
plunged  forward  through  all  these  dim  leafy  obstruc- 
tions. 

Gradually,  as  he  drew  nearer  the  hill's  summit, 
there  formed  in  his  mind  the  only  real  sanctuary  of 
refuge,  the  only  genuine  deliverance.  He  must  obey 
his  innate  conscience;  and  let  the  result  be  as  God 
willed.  At  all  costs  he  must  shake  himself  clear  of 
this  hot,  sweet,  luscious  bind-weed,  that  was  choking 
the  growth  of  his  soul.  His  own  soul  —  that,  after 
all,  was  his  first  care,  his  predominant  concern.  To 
keep  that,  pure  and  undefiled,  and  let  all  else  go! 
Confused  by  the  subtle  arguments  of  the  serpent,  he 
would  cling  only  the  more  passionately  to  the  actual 
figure  of  the  God-Man,  and  obey  his  profound  com- 
mand in  its  literal  simplicity.  Ecclesiastical  casuistry 
might  say  what  it  pleased  about  the  danger  he 
plunged  Gladys  into,  in  thus  neglecting  her.  The 
matter  had  gone  deeper  than  casuistry,  deeper,  far 
deeper,  than  points  of  doctrine.  It  had  become  a 
direct  personal  struggle  betw^een  his  own  soul  and 
Satan;  a  struggle  in  which,  as  he  well  knew,  the 
only  victory  lay  in  flight.  On  other  fields  he  might 
be  commanded  by  his  celestial  Captain  to  hold  his 
post  to  the  last;  but  in  the  arena  of  this  temptation, 
to  hold  the  field  was  to  desert  the  field;  to  escape 
from  it,  to  win  it. 

He  paused  breathlessly  under  a  clump  of  larches, 
and  stretching  out  his  arms,  seized  —  like  Samson 
in  the  temple  of  Dagon  —  two  of  the  slender-growing 
trunks.  "Let  all  this  insidious  growth  of  Nature," 
he  thought,  "all  this  teeming  and  prolific  exuberance 


MYTHOLOGY  OF  SACRIFICE      143 

of  godless  life,  be  thrust  into  oblivion,  as  long  as  the 
great  translunar  Secret  be  kept  inviolable!"  Ex- 
hausted by  the  struggle  within  him  he  sank  down  in 
the  green  twilight  of  that  leafy  security,  and  crossed 
his  hands  over  his  knees.  Through  a  gap  in  the  foli- 
age he  could  perceive  the  valley  below;  he  could  even 
perceive  the  outline  of  the  roof  of  Nevilton  House. 
But  against  the  magic  of  those  carved  pinnacles  he 
had  found  a  counter-charm.  In  the  hushed  stillness 
about  him,  he  seemed  conscious  of  the  power  of  all 
these  entangled  growing  things  as  a  sinister  heathen 
influence  pulling  him  earthward. 

Men  differ  curiously  from  one  another  in  this 
respect.  To  some  among  them  the  influences  of 
what  we  call  Nature  are  in  harmony  with  all  that 
is  good  in  them,  and  have  a  soothing  and  mystical 
effect.  Others  seem  to  disentangle  themselves  from 
every  natural  surrounding,  and  to  stand  out,  against 
the  background  of  their  own  spiritual  horizons,  clear- 
edged,  opaque,  and  resistant. 

Clavering  was  entirely  of  this  latter  type.  Nature 
to  him  was  always  full  of  hidden  dangers  and  secret 
perils.  He  found  her  power  a  magical,  not  a  mystical, 
one.  He  resented  the  spell  she  cast  over  him.  It 
seemed  to  lend  itself,  all  too  willingly,  to  the  vicious 
demons  that  delighted  to  waylay  his  unguarded  hours. 
His  instinctive  attitude  to  these  enchanting  natural 
forces  was  that  of  a  mediaeval  monk.  Their  bewitch- 
ing shapes,  their  lovely  colours,  their  penetrating 
odours,  were  all  permeated  for  him  by  a  subtle  diffu- 
sion of  something  evil  there;  something  capable  of 
leading  one's  spirit  desperately,  miserably  far  —  if  one 
allowed   it   the   smallest   welcome.     Against   all   these 


144  WOOD  AND   STONE 

siren-voices  rumouring  and  whispering  so  treacher- 
ously around  us,  against  all  this  shifting  and  flitting 
wizardry,  one  defence  alone  availed;  —  the  clear-cut, 
absolute  authority,  of  Him  who  makes  the  clouds  his 
chariot  and  the  earth  his  footstool. 

As  Clavering  sat  crouching  there  under  his  tent  of 
larches,  the  spirit  of  the  Christ  he  served  seemed  to 
pass  surging  through  him  like  a  passionate  flood.  He 
drew  deep  breaths  of  exquisite  relief  and  comfort. 
The  problem  was  solved,  —  was  indeed  no  problem 
at  all;  for  he  had  nothing  to  do  but  to  obey  the 
absolute  authority,  the  soul-piercing  word.  Who  was 
he  to  question  results.^  The  same  God  who  com- 
manded him  to  flee  from  temptation  w^as  able  —  be- 
yond the  mystery  of  his  own  divine  method  —  to 
save  her  who  tempted  him,  whether  baptized  or 
unbaptized! 

He  leapt  to  his  feet,  and  no  more  like  one  pursued, 
but  rather  like  one  pursuing,  pushed  his  way  to  the 
summit  of  the  Mount.  The  space  at  the  top  was 
flat  and  circular;  not  unlike,  in  its  smooth  level 
surface,  the  top  of  the  mountain  in  that  very  Trans- 
figuration picture  which  was  now  overshadowing  his 
letter  to  his  enchantress.  In  the  centre  of  this  open 
space  rose  the  thin  Thyrsus-shaped  tower.  He 
advanced  to  the  eastern  edge  of  the  hill  and  looked 
down  over  the  wide-spread  landscape. 

The  flat  elm-fringed  meadows  of  the  great  mid- 
Somerset  plain  stretched  softly  away,  till  they  lost 
themselves  in  a  purple  mist.  Never  had  the  formi- 
dable outline  of  the  Leonian  promontory  looked  more 
emphatic  and  sinister  than  it  looked  in  this  deepening 
twilight.     The  sky  above  it  was  of  a  pale  green  tint, 


MYTHOLOGY  OF  SACRIFICE      145 


flecked  here  and  there  by  feathery  streaks  of  carmine. 
The  whole  sky-dome  was  still  lit  by  the  pallid  reflec- 
tion of  the  dead  sunset;  and  on  the  far  northern 
horizon,  where  the  Mendip  hills  rise  above  the  plain, 
a  livid  whitish  glimmer  touched  the  rim  of  an  enor- 
mous range  of  sombre  clouds. 

The  priest  stood,  hushed,  and  motionless  as  a  statue, 
contemplating  this  suggestive  panorama.  But  little 
of  its  transparent  beauty  passed  the  surface  of  his 
consciousness.  He  was  absorbed,  rapt,  intent.  But 
the  cause  of  his  abstraction  was  not  the  diaphanous 
air-spaces  above  him  or  the  dark  earth  beneath  him; 
it  was  the  pouring  of  the  waves  of  divine  love  through 
his  inmost  being;  it  was  his  fusion  with  that  great 
Spirit  of  the  Beyond  which  renders  its  votaries  inde- 
pendent of  space  and  time. 

After  long  exquisite  moments  of  this  high  exulta- 
tion, his  mind  gradually  resumed  its  normal  function- 
ing. A  cynical  interpreter  of  this  sublime  experience 
would  doubtless  have  attributed  the  whole  phenome- 
non to  a  natural  reaction  of  the  priest,  back  to  his 
habitual  moral  temper,  from  the  turbulent  perturba- 
tions of  the  recent  days.  Would  such  a  one  have 
found  it  a  mere  coincidence  that  at  the  moment  of 
regaining  his  natural  vision  the  clergyman's  attention 
was  arrested  by  the  slow  passage  of  a  huge  white 
cloud  towards  the  Leonian  promontory,  a  cloud  that 
assumed,  as  it  moved,  gigantic  and  almost  human 
lineaments? 

Coincidence  or  not,  Clavering's  attention  was  not 
allowed  to  remain  fixed  upon  this  interesting  spectacle. 
It  seemed  as  though  his  return  to  ordinary  human 
consciousness    was    destined    to    be    attended    by    the 


146  WOOD  AND   STONE 

reappearance  of  ordinary  humanity.  He  perceived  in 
the  great  sloping  field  on  the  eastern  side  of  the  mount 
the  white  figure  of  a  woman,  walking  alone.  For  the 
moment  his  heart  stood  still;  but  a  second  glance 
reassured  him.  He  knew  that  figure,  even  in  the 
dying  light.  It  was  little  Vennie  Seldom.  Simul- 
taneously with  this  discovery  he  was  suddenly  aware 
that  he  was  no  longer  the  only  frequenter  of  the 
woody  solitudes  of  Nevilton  Hill.  On  a  sort  of 
terrace,  about  a  hundred  yards  below  him,  there 
suddenly  moved  into  sight  a  boy  and  a  girl,  walking 
closely  interlinked  and  whispering  softly.  Acting 
mechanically,  and  as  if  impelled  by  an  impulse  from 
an  external  power,  he  sank  down  upon  his  knees  and 
spied  upon  them.  They  too  slipped  into  a  semi- 
recumbent  posture,  apparently  upon  the  branches  of 
a  fallen  tree,  and  proceeded,  in  blissful  unconscious- 
ness of  any  spectator,  to  indulge  in  a  long  and  pas- 
sionate embrace.  From  where  he  crouched  Clavering 
could  actually  discern  these  innocents'  kisses,  and 
catch  the  little  pathetic  murmurings  of  their  amorous 
happiness.  His  heart  beat  wildly  and  strangely.  In 
his  fingers  he  clutched  great  handfuls  of  earth.  His 
thoughts  played  him  satyrish  and  fantastic  tricks. 
Suddenly  he  leapt  to  his  feet  and  stumbled  away,  like 
an  animal  that  has  been  wounded.  He  encountered 
the  Thyrsus-shaped  tower  —  that  queer  fancy  of 
eighteenth  century  leisure  —  and  beat  wnth  his  hands 
upon  its  hard  smooth  surface.  After  a  second  or 
two,  however,  he  recovered  his  self-control;  and  to 
afford  some  excuse  to  his  own  mind  for  his  mad 
behaviour,  he  walked  deliberately  round  the  edifice, 
looking   for   its   entrance.     This   he   presently   found. 


MYTHOLOGY  OF  SACRIFICE      147 

and  stood  observing  it,  with  scowling  interest,  in  the 
growing  darkness.  He  had  recognized  the  lovers 
down  there.  They  were  both  youngsters  of  his 
parish.  He  made  a  detached  mental  resolve  to  talk 
tomorrow  to  the  girl's  mother.  These  flirtations 
during  the  hay-harvest  often  led  to  trouble. 

There  was  just  enough  light  left  for  him  to  remark 
some  obscure  lettering  above  the  little  locked  door  of 
this  fanciful  erection.  It  annoyed  him  that  he  could 
not  read  it.  With  trembling  hand  he  fumbled  in  his 
pocket  —  produced  a  match-box  and  lit  a  match. 
There  was  no  difficulty  now  in  reading  what  it  had 
been  the  humour  of  some  eighteenth  century  Seldom 
to  have  carved  on  this  site  of  the  discovery  of  the 
Holy  Rood.  "Carpe  Diem"  he  spelt  out,  before  the 
flutterings  of  an  agitated  moth  extinguished  the  light 
he  held.  This  then  was  the  oracle  he  had  climbed 
the  sacred  Mount  to  hear! 

With  quick  steps,  steps  over  which  his  mind  seemed 
no  longer  to  have  control,  he  returned  to  his  point  of 
observation.  The  boy  and  girl  had  disappeared,  but 
Vennie  Seldom  was  still  visible  in  her  white  dress, 
pacing  up  and  down  the  meadow.  What  was  she 
doing  there.'^  —  he  wondered.  Did  she  often  slip  away, 
after  the  little  formal  dinner  with  her  mother,  and 
wander  at  large  through  the  evening  shadows?  An 
unaccountable  rage  against  her  beseiged  his  heart. 
He  felt  he  should  soon  begin  to  hate  her  if  he  watched 
her  much  longer;  so,  with  a  more  collected  and  calm 
step  and  a  sigh  that  rose  from  the  depths  of  his  soul 
he  moved  away  to  where  the  path  descended. 

As  it  happened,  however,  the  path  he  had  to  follow 
now,  for  it  was  too  dark  to  return  as  he  had  come. 


Its  WOOD  AND   STONE 

emerged,  after  many  windings  round  the  circle  of  the 
hill,  precisely  into  the  very  field,  in  which  Vennie  was 
walking.  He  moved  straight  towards  her.  She  gave 
a  little  start  when  she  saw  him,  but  waited  passively, 
in  that  patient  drooping  pose  so  natural  to  her,  till 
he  was  by  her  side. 

"You  too,"  she  said,  touching  his  hand,  "feel  the 
necessity  of  being  alone  a  little  while  before  the  day 
ends.  I  always  do.  Mother  sometimes  protests. 
But  it  is  no  good.  There  are  certain  little  pleasures 
that  we  have  a  right  to  enjoy  —  haven't  we?" 

They  moved  together  along  the  base  of  the  hill 
following  its  circuit  in  the  northerly  direction, 
Clavering  felt  as  though,  after  a  backward  plunge 
into  the  Inferno,  he  had  encountered  a  reproachful 
angel  of  light.  He  half  expected  her  to  say  to  him, 
in  the  crushing  austerity  of  Beatrice,  "Lift  up  your 
chin  and  answer  me  face  to  face."  The  gentle  power 
of  her  pure  spirit  over  him  was  so  persuasive  that  in 
the  after-ebb  of  this  second  turbulent  reaction  he 
could  not  refrain  from  striking  the  confessional 
note. 

"I  wish  I  were  as  good  as  you.  Miss  Seldom,"  he 
said.  "I  fear  the  power  of  evil  in  me  goes  beyond 
anything  you  could  possibly  conceive." 

"There  are  few  things  I  cannot  conceive,  Mr. 
Clavering,"  the  girl  answered,  with  that  helpless  droop 
of  her  little  head  that  had  so  winning  a  pathos. 
"We  people  who  live  such  secluded  lives  are  not  as 
ignorant  of  the  great  storms  as  you  may  imagine." 

Clavering's  voice  shook  as  he  responded  to  this. 

"I  wish  I  could  talk  quite  freely  to  you.  This 
convention  that  forbids  friends  such  as  we  are  from 


MYTHOLOGY   OF   SACRIFICE      149 

being  frank  with  one  another,  seems  to  me  sometimes 
an  invention  of  the  devil." 

The  girl  Hfted  her  head.  He  could  not  see  in  the 
darkness  that  had  now  fallen  upon  them,  how  her 
mouth  quivered  and  her  cheeks  grew  scarlet. 

*'I  think  I  can  guess  at  what  is  worrying  you,  my 
friend,"  she  murmured  gently. 

He  trembled  from  head  to  foot  with  a  curious  shame. 
"You  think  it  is  about  Gladys  Romer,"  he  burst 
out.  "Well  it  is!  I  find  her  one  of  the  greatest 
difficulties  I  have  ever  had  in  my  life." 

"I  am  afraid,"  said  Vennie  timidly,  "she  intends 
to  be  a  difficulty  to  you.  It  is  wrong  to  say  so,  but 
I  have  always  been  suspicious  of  her  motives  in  this 
desire  to  enter  our  church," 

"God  knows  what  her  motives  are!"  sighed  the 
priest,  "I  only  know  she  makes  it  as  hard  for  me  as 
she  can." 

As  soon  as  he  had  uttered  these  words  a  queer 
observing  sense  of  having  been  treacherous  to  Gladys 
rose  in  his  heart.  Once  more  he  had  to  suppress  an 
emotion  of  hatred  for  the  little  saint  by  his  side. 

"I  know,"  murmured  Vennie,  "I  know.  She  tries 
to  play  upon  your  good-nature.  She  tries  to  make 
you  over-fond  of  her.  I  suppose"  —  she  paused  for 
a  moment  —  "I  suppose  she  is  like  that.  It  is  not 
her  fault.  It  is  her  —  her  character.  She  has  a  mad 
craving  for  admiration  and  is  ready  to  play  it  off  on 
anybody." 

"It  makes  it  very  difficult  to  help  her,"  said  the 
priest  evasively. 

Vennie  peered  anxiously  at  his  face.  "It  is  not  as 
though  she  really  was  fond  of  you,"  she  boldly  added. 


150  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"I  doubt  whether  she  is  fond  of  anyone.  She  loves 
troubling  people's  minds  and  making  them  unhappy." 

"Don't  mistake  me,  Miss  Seldom,"  cried  Clavering. 
"I  am  not  in  the  least  sentimental  about  her  —  it  is 
only  —  only" —     Vennie  smoothed  his  path  for  him. 

"It  is  only  that  she  makes  it  impossible  for  you  to 
teach  her,"  she  hazarded,  following  his  lead.  "I 
know  something  of  that  difficulty  myself.  These 
wayward  pleasure-loving  people  make  it  very  hard 
for  us  all  sometimes." 

Mr.  Clavering  shook  his  stick  defiantly  into  the 
darkness,  whether  as  a  movement  directed  against 
the  powers  of  evil  or  against  the  powers  of  good,  he 
would  himself  have  found  it  hard  to  say.  Queer 
thoughts  of  a  humourous  frivolity  passed  through  his 
mind.  Something  in  the  girl's  grave  tone  had  an 
irritating  effect  upon  him.  It  is  always  a  little  annoy- 
ing, even  to  the  best  of  men,  to  feel  themselves  being 
guided  and  directed  by  women,  unless  they  are  in 
love  with  them.  Clavering  was  certainly  not  in  love 
with  Vennie;  and  though  in  his  emotional  agitation 
he  had  gone  so  far  in  confiding  in  her,  he  was  by  no 
means  unconscious  of  something  incongruous  and  even 
ridiculous  in  the  situation.  This  queer  new  frivolity 
in  him,  which  now  peered  forth  from  some  twisted 
corner  of  his  nature,  like  a  rat  out  of  a  hole,  found 
this  whole  interview  intolerably  absurd.  He  suddenly 
experienced  the  sensation  of  being  led  along  at 
Vennie's  side  like  a  convicted  school-boy.  He  found 
himself  rebelling  against  all  women  in  his  heart, 
both  good  and  bad,  and  recalling,  humorously  and 
sadly,  the  old  sweet  scandalous  attitude  of  contempt 
for  the  whole  sex,  of  his  irresponsible  Cambridge  days. 


MYTHOLOGY  OF  SACRIFICE      151 

Perhaps,  dimly  and  unconsciously,  he  was  reacting 
now,  after  all  this  interval,  to  the  subtle  influence  of 
Mr.  Taxater.  He  knew  perfectly  well  that  the  very 
idea  of  a  man  —  not  to  speak  of  a  priest  —  confid- 
ing his  amorous  weaknesses  to  a  woman,  would  have 
excited  that  epicurean  sage  to  voluble  fury.  Every- 
thing that  was  mediaeval  and  monkish  in  him  rose  up 
too,  in  support  of  this  interior  outburst  of  Rabelaisean 
spleen. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  know  if  Vennie  had  any 
inkling,  as  she  walked  in  the  darkness  by  his  side, 
of  this  new  and  unexpected  veering  of  his  mood. 
Certainly  she  refrained  from  pressing  him  for  any 
further  confessions.  Perhaps  with  the  genuine  clair- 
voyance of  a  saint  she  was  conscious  of  her  danger. 
At  any  rate  she  began  speaking  to  him  of  herself, 
of  her  difficulties  with  her  mother  and  her  mother's 
friends,  of  her  desire  to  be  of  more  use  to  Lacrima 
Traffio,  and  of  the  obstacles  in  the  way  of  that. 

Conversing  with  friendly  familiarity  on  these  less 
poignant  topics  they  arrived  at  last  at  the  gates"  of 
the  Priory  farm  and  the  entrance  to  the  church. 
Mr.  Clavering  was  proceeding  to  escort  her  home, 
when  she  suddenly  stopped  in  the  road,  and  said  in  a 
quick  hurried  whisper,  "I  should  dearly  love  to  walk 
once  round  the  churchyard  before  I  go  back." 

The  cheerful  light  from  the  windows  of  the  Goat 
and  Boy  showed,  as  it  shone  upon  his  face,  his 
surprise  as  well  as  his  disinclination.  The  truth  is, 
that  by  a  subtle  reversion  of  logic  he  had  now  reached 
the  idea  that  it  was  at  once  absurd  and  unkind  to 
send  that  letter  to  Gladys.  He  was  trembling  to 
tear  it  in  pieces,  and  burn  the  pieces  in  his  kitchen- 


152  WOOD   AND   STONE 

fire!  Vennie  however,  did  not  look  at  his  face.  She 
looked  at  the  solemn  tower  of  St.  Catharine's 
church. 

"Please  get  the  key,"  she  said,  "and  let  us  walk 
once  round," 

He  was  compelled  to  obey  her,  and  knocking  at 
the  door  of  the  clerk's  cottage  aroused  that  aston- 
ished and  scandalized  official  into  throwing  the  object 
required  out  of  his  bedroom  window.  Once  inside  the 
churchyard  however,  the  strange  and  mystical  power 
of  the  spot  brought  his  mood  into  nearer  conformity 
with  his  companion's. 

They  stopped,  as  everyone  who  visits  Nevilton 
churchyard  is  induced  to  stop,  before  the  extraordi- 
nary tomb  of  Gideon  and  Naomi  Andersen.  The 
thing  had  been  constructed  from  the  eccentric  old 
carver's  own  design,  and  had  proved  one  of  the 
keenest  pleasures  of  his  last  hours. 

Like  the  whimsical  poet  Donne,  he  had  derived  a 
sardonic  and  not  altogether  holy  delight  in  contemplat- 
ing before  his  end  the  actual  slab  of  earthly  consistence 
that  was  to  make  his  bodily  resurrection  so  emphatically 
miraculous.  Clavering  and  Vennie  stood  for  several 
minutes  in  mute  contemplation  before  this  strange 
monument.  It  was  composed  of  a  huge,  solid  block  of 
Leonian  stone,  carved  at  the  top  into  the  likeness  of  an 
enormous  human  skull,  and  ornamented,  below  the 
skull,  by  a  deeply  cut  cross  surrounded  by  a  circle. 
This  last  addition  gave  to  the  sacred  symbol  within 
it  a  certain  heathen  and  ungodly  look,  making  it 
seem  as  though  it  were  no  cross  at  all,  but  a  pagan 
hieroglyph  from  some  remote  unconsecrated  antiquity. 
The  girl  laid  her  fragile  hand  on  the   monstrous  image 


MYTHOLOGY   OF   SACRIFICE      153 

of  death,  which  the  gloom  around  them  made  all  the 
more  threatening. 

"It  is  wonderful,"  she  said,  "how  the  power  of 
Christ  can  change  even  the  darkest  objects  into 
beauty.  I  like  to  think  of  Him  striking  Ilis  hand 
straight  through  the  clumsy  half-laws  of  Man  and 
Nature,  and  holding  out  to  us  the  promise  of  things 
far  beyond  all  this  morbid  dissolution." 

"You  are  right,  my  friend,"  answered  the  priest. 

"I  think  the  world  is  really  a  dark  and  dreadful 
place,"  she  went  on.  "I  cannot  help  saying  so.  I 
know  there  are  people  who  only  see  its  beauty  and 
joy.  T  cannot  feel  like  that.  If  it  wasn't  for  Hira 
I  should  be  utterly  miserable.  I  think  I  should  go 
mad.  There  is  too  much  unhappiness  —  too  much  to 
be  borne!  But  this  strong  hand  of  His,  struck  clean 
down  to  us  from  outside  the  whole  wretched  con- 
fusion,—  I  cling  to  that;  and  it  saves  me.  I  know 
there  are  lots  of  happy  people,  but  I  cannot  forget 
the  others!  I  think  of  them  in  the  night.  I  think 
of  them  always.     They  are  so  many  — so  many!" 

"Dear  child!"  murmured  the  priest,  his  interlude 
of  casual  frivolity  melting  away  like  mist  under  the 
flame  of  her  conviction. 

"Do  you  think,"  she  continued,  "that  if  we  were 
able  to  hear  the  weeping  of  all  those  who  suffer  and 
have  suffered  since  the  beginning  of  the  world,  we 
could  endure  the  idea  of  going  on  living?  It  would  be 
too  much!  The  burden  of  those  tears  would  darken 
the  sun  and  hide  the  moon.  It  is  only  His  presence 
in  the  midst  of  us,  —  His  presence,  coming  in  from 
outside,  that  makes  it  possible  for  us  to  endure  and 
have  patience." 


154  WOOD   AND   STOXE 

"Yes,  He  must  come  in  from  outside,"  murmured 
the  priest,  "or  He  cannot  help  us.  He  must  be  able 
to  break  every  law  and  custom  and  rule  of  nature 
and  man.  He  must  strike  at  the  whole  miserable 
entanglement  from  outside  it  —  from  outside  it!" 

Clavering's  voice  rose  almost  to  a  shout  as  he  uttered 
these  last  words.  He  felt  as  though  he  were  refuting 
in  one  tremendous  cry  of  passionate  certainty  all  those 
"modernistic"  theories  with  which  he  loved  some- 
times to  play.  He  was  completely  under  Vennie's 
influence  now. 

"And  we  must  help  Him,"  said  the  girl,  "by 
entering  into  His  Sacrifice.  Only  by  sacrifice  —  by 
the  sacrifice  of  everything  —  can  we  enable  Him  to 
work  the  miracle  which  He  would  accomplish!" 

Clavering  could  do  nothing  but  echo  her  words. 

"The  sacrifice  of  everything,"  he  whispered,  and 
abstractedly  laid  his  hand  upon  the  image  of  death 
carved  by  the  old  artist.  Moved  apparently  by  an 
unexpected  impulse,  Vennie  seized,  with  her  own,  the 
hand  thus  extended. 

"I  have  thought,"  she  cried,  "of  a  way  out  of  your 
difficulty.  Give  her  her  lessons  in  the  church!  That 
will  not  hurt  her  feelings,  and  it  will  save  you.  It 
will  prevent  her  from  distracting  your  mind,  and 
it  will  concentrate  her  attention  upon  your  teaching. 
It  will  save  you  both!" 

Clavering  held  the  little  hand,  thus  innocently 
given  him,  tenderly  and  solemnly  in  both  of  his. 

"You  are  right,  my  friend,"  he  said,  and  then, 
gravely  and  emphatically  as  if  repeating  a  vow,  — 
"I  will  take  her  in  the  church.  That  will  settle 
everything." 


MYTHOLOGY  OF  SACRIFICE      155 

Vennie  seemed  thrilled  with  spiritual  joy  at  his 
acquiescence  in  her  happy  inspiration.  She  walked 
so  rapidly  as  they  recrossed  the  churchyard  that  he 
could  hardly  keep  pace  with  her.  She  seemed  to 
long  to  escape,  to  the  solitude  of  her  own  home,  of 
her  own  room,  in  order  to  give  full  vent  to  her 
feelings.  He  locked  the  gate  of  the  porch  behind 
them,  and  put  the  key  in  his  pocket.  Very  quickly 
and  in  complete  silence  they  made  their  way  up  the 
road  to  the  entrance  of  the  \'icarage  garden. 

Here  they  separated,  with  one  more  significant  and 
solemn  hand-clasp.  It  was  as  if  the  spirit  of  St. 
Catharine  herself  was  in  the  girl,  so  ethereal  did  she 
look,  so  transported  by  unearthly  emotion,  as  the 
gate  swung  behind  her. 

As  for  the  \'icar  of  Nevilton,  he  strode  back  impetu- 
ously to  his  own  house,  and  there,  from  its  place 
beneath  the  print  of  the  transfiguration,  he  took  the 
letter,  and  tore  it  into  many  pieces;  but  he  tore  it 
with  a  different  intention  from  that  which,  an  hour 
before,  had  ruled  his  brain;  and  the  sleep  which 
awaited  him,  as  soon  as  his  head  touched  his  pillow, 
was  the  soundest  and  sweetest  he  had  known  since 
first  he  came  to  the  village. 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE  MYTHOLOGY  OF  POWER 

IT  was  late  in  the  afternoon  of  the  day  following 
the  events  just  described.  Mrs.  Fringe  was 
passing  in  and  out  of  Clavering's  sitting-room 
making  the  removal  of  his  tea  an  opportunity  for 
interminable  discourse. 

"They  say  Eliza  Wotnot's  had  a  bad  week  of  it 
with  one  thing  and  another.  They  say  she  be  as 
yellow  as  a  lemon-pip  in  her  body,  as  you  might  call 
it,  and  grey  as  ash-heaps  in  her  old  face.  I  never 
cared  for  the  woman  myself,  and  I  don't  gather  as 
she  was  desperate  liked  in  the  village,  but  a  Chris- 
tian's a  Christian  when  they  be  laid  low  in  the 
Lord's  pleasure,  though  they  be  as  surly-tongued  as 
Satan." 

"I  know,  I  know,"  said  the  clergyman  impatiently. 

"They  say  Mr.  Taxater  sits  up  with  her  night  after 
night  as  if  he  was  a  trained  nurse.  Why  he  don't 
have  a  nurse  I  can't  think,  'cept  it  be  some  papist 
practice.  The  poor  gentleman  will  be  getting  woeful 
thin,  if  this  goes  on.  He's  not  one  for  losing  his  sleep 
and  his  regular  meals." 

"Sally  Birch  is  doing  all  that  for  him,  Mrs.  Fringe," 
said  Clavering.     "I  have  seen  to  it  myself." 

"Sally  Birch  knows  as  much  about  cooking  a 
gentleman's  meals  as  my  Lottie,  and  that's  not  saying 
a  great  deal." 


THE   MYTHOLOGY   OF   POWER    157 

"Thank  you,  Mrs.  Fringe,  thank  you,"  said  Claver- 
ing.     "You  need  not  move  the  table." 

"Oh,  of  course,  'tis  Miss  Gladys'  lesson-day.  They 
say  she's  given  young  Mr.  Ilminster  the  go-by,  sir. 
'Tis  strange  and  wonderful  how  some  people  be  made 
by  the  holy  Lord  to  have  their  whole  blessed  pleasure 
in  this  world.  Providence  do  love  the  ones  as  loves 
themselves,  and  those  that  seeks  what  they  want  shall 
find  it!  I  expect,  between  ourselves,  sir,  the  young 
lady  have  got  someone  else  in  her  eye.  They  tell  me 
some  great  thundering  swell  from  London  is  staying 
in  the  House." 

"That'll  do,  Mrs.  Fringe,  that'll  do.  You  can 
leave  those  flowers  a  little  longer." 

"I  ought  to  let  you  know,  sir,  that  old  Jimmy 
Pringle  has  gone  off  wandering  again.  I  saw  Witch- 
Bessie  at  his  door  when  I  went  to  the  shop  this 
morning  and  she  told  me  he  was  talking  and  talking, 
as  badly  as  ever  he  did.  Far  gone,  poor  old  sinner, 
Witch-Bessie  said  he  was." 

"He  is  a  religious  minded  man,  I  believe,  at  bot- 
tom," said  the  clergyman. 

"He  be  stark  mad,  sir,  if  that's  what  you  mean!  As 
to  the  rest,  they  say  his  carryings  on  with  that  har- 
lotry down  in  Yeoborough  was  a  disgrace  to  a  Chris- 
tian country." 

"I  know,"  said  Clavering,  "I  know,  but  we  all 
have  our  temptations,  Mrs.  Fringe." 

"Temptations,  sir?"  and  the  sandy  complexloned 
female  snorted  with  contempt.  "And  is  those  as 
takes  no  drop  of  liquor,  and  looks  at  no  man  edge- 
ways, though  their  own  lawful  partner  be  a  stiff 
corpse    of    seven    years'    burying,    to    be    put    in    the 


lo8  WOOD   AND   STONE 

same    class     with     them     as    goes    rampaging    with 
harlotries?" 

"He  has  repented,  Mrs.  Fringe,  he  has  repented. 
He  told  me  so  himself  when  I  met  him  last  week." 

"Repented!"  groaned  the  indignant  woman;  "he 
repents  well  who  repents  when  he  can't  sin  no  more. 
His  talk,  if  you  ask  me,  sir,  is  more  scandalous  than 
religious.  Witch-Bessie  told  me  she  heard  him  say 
that  he  had  seen  the  Lord  Himself.  I  am  not  a 
learned  scholar  like  you,  sir,  but  I  know  this,  that 
when  the  Lord  does  go  about  the  earth  he  doesn't 
visit  hoary  old  villains  like  Jimmy  Pringle  —  except 
to  tell  them  they  be  damned." 

"Did  he  really  say  that?"  asked  the  clergyman, 
feeling  a  growing  interest  in  Mr.  Pringle's  revelations. 

"Yes,  sir,  he  did,  sir!  Said  he  met  God,  —  those 
were  his  very  words,  and  indecent  enough  words  I 
call  them!  —  out  along  by  Captain  AVhiffley's  drive- 
gate.  You  should  have  heard  ^Yitch-Bessie  tell  me. 
He  frightened  her,  he  did,  the  wicked  old  man! 
God,  he  said,  came  to  him,  as  I  might  come  to  you, 
sir,  quite  ordinary  and  familiar-like.  'Jimmy,'  said 
God,  all  sudden,  as  if  he  were  a  person  passing  the 
time  of  day,  'I  have  come  to  see  you,  Jimmy.' 

"'And  who  may  you  be.  Mister?'  said  the  wicked 
old  man,  just  as  though  the  Lord  above  were  a  casual 
decent-dressed  gentleman. 

"'I  am  God,  Jimmy,'  said  the  Vision.  'And  I  be 
come  to  tell  'ee  how  dearly  I  loves  'ee,  spite  of  Satan 
and  all  his  works.'  Witch-Bessie  told  me,"  Mrs. 
Fringe  continued,  "how  as  the  old  man  said  things 
to  her  as  she  never  thought  to  hear  from  human  lips, 
so  dreadful  they  were." 


THE   MYTHOLOGY  OF  POWER    159 

"And  what  happened  then?"  asked  Clavering 
eagerly. 

"What  happened  then?  Why  God  went  away,  he 
said,  in  a  great  cloud  of  roaring  fire,  and  he  was 
left  alone,  all  dazed-like.  Did  you  ever  hear  such  a 
scimble-scamble  story  in  your  life,  sir?  And  all  by 
Captain  Whiflley's  drive-gate!" 

"Well,  Mrs.  Fringe,"  said  the  clergyman,  "I  think 
we  must  postpone  the  rest  of  this  interesting  conver- 
sation till  supper-time.  I  have  several  things  I  want 
to  do." 

"I  know  you  have,  sir,  I  know  you  have.  It  isn't 
easy  to  find  out  from  all  them  books  ways  and  means 
of  keeping  young  ladies  like  Miss  Gladys  in  the  path 
of  salvation.  How  does  she  get  on,  sir,  if  I  might 
be  so  bold?  I  fear  she  don't  learn  her  catechism  as 
quiet  and  patient  as  I  used  to  learn  mine,  under  old 
Mr.    Ravelin,    God    forgive    him!" 

"Oh,  I  think  Miss  Romer  is  quite  as  good  a 
pupil  as  you  used  to  be,  Mrs.  Fringe,"  said  Clave- 
ring, rising  and  gently  ushering  her  out  of  the 
door. 

"She's  as  good  as  some  of  these  new-fangled  vil- 
lage hussies,  anyway,"  retorted  the  irrepressible  lady, 
turning  on  the  threshold.  "They  tell  me  that  Lucy 
Vare  was  off  again  last  night  with  that  rascally  Tom 
Mooring.  She'll  be  in  trouble,  that  young  girl,  before 
she  wants  to  be." 

"I  know,  I  know,"  sighed  the  clergyman  sadly, 
fumbling  with  the  door  handle. 

"You  don't  know  all  you  ought  to  know,  sir,  if 
you'll  pardon  my  boldness,"  returned  the  woman, 
making  a  step  backwards. 


160  ^YOOD  AND   STONE 

"I  know,  because  I  saw  them!"  shouted  Clavering, 
closing  the  door  with  irritable  violence. 

"Goodness  me!"  muttered  Mrs.  Fringe,  returning 
to  her  kitchen,  "if  the  poor  young  man  knew  what 
this  parish  was  really  like,  he  wouldn't  talk  so  freely 
about  'seeing'  people!" 

Left  to  himself,  Clavering  moved  uneasily  round  his 
room,  taking  down  first  one  book  and  then  another, 
and  looking  anxiously  at  his  shelves  as  if  seeking 
something  from  them  more  efficient  than  eloquent 
words. 

"As  soon  as  she  comes,"  he  said  to  himself,  "I 
shall  take  her  across  to  the  church." 

He  had  not  long  to  wait.  The  door  at  the  end  of 
the  garden-path  clicked.  Light-tripping  steps  fol- 
lowed, and  Gladys  Romer's  well-known  figure  made 
itself  visible  through  the  open  window.  He  hastened 
out  to  meet  her,  hoping  to  forestall  the  hospitable 
Mrs.  Fringe.  In  this,  however,  he  was  unsuccessful. 
His  house-keeper  was  already  in  the  porch,  taking 
from  the  girl  her  parasol  and  gloves.  How  these 
little  things,  these  chance-thrown  little  things,  always 
intervene  between  our  good  resolutions  and  their 
accomplishment!  He  ought  to  have  been  ready  in  his 
garden,  on  the  watch  for  her.  Surely  he  had  not  in- 
tentionally remained  in  his  room?  No,  it  was  the 
fault  of  Mrs.  Fringe;  of  Mrs.  Fringe  and  her  stories 
about  Jimmy  Pringle  and  God.  He  wished  that  "a 
roaring  cloud  of  fire"  would  rise  between  him  and 
this  voluptuous  temptress.  But  probably,  priest 
though  he  was,  he  lacked  the  faith  of  that  ancient 
reprobate.  He  stood  aside  to  let  her  enter.  The 
words  "I  think  it  would  be  better  if  we  went  over 


THE   MYTHOLOGY  OF  POWER    161 

to  the  church,"  stuck,  unuttered,  to  the  roof  of  his 
mouth.  She  held  out  her  white  ungloved  hand,  and 
then,  as  soon  as  the  door  was  closed,  began  very 
deliberately  removing  her  hat. 

He  stood  before  her  smiling,  that  rather  inept 
smile,  which  indicates  the  complete  paralysis  of  every 
faculty,  except  the  faculty  of  admiration.  He  could 
hardly  now  suggest  a  move  to  the  church.  He 
could  not  trouble  her  to  re-assume  that  charming 
hat.  Besides,  what  reason  could  he  give?  He  did, 
however,  give  a  somewhat  ambiguous  reason  for 
following  out  Vennie's  heroic  plan  on  another  —  a 
different  —  occasion.  In  the  tone  we  use  when  allay- 
ing the  pricks  of  conscience  by  tacitly  treating  that 
sacred  monitor  as  if  its  intelligence  were  of  an  in- 
ferior order:  "One  of  these  days,"  he  said,  "we  must 
have  our  lesson  in  the  church.  It  would  be  so  nice 
and  cool  there,  wouldn't  it.f*" 

There  was  a  scent  of  burning  weeds  in  the  front- 
room  of  the  old  vicarage,  when  master  and  neophyte 
sat  down  together,  at  the  round  oak  table,  before  the 
extended  works  of  Pusey  and  Newman.  Sombre 
were  the  bindings  of  these  repositories  of  orthodoxy, 
but  the  pleasant  afternoon  sun  streamed  wantonly 
over  them  and  illumined  their  gloom. 

Gladys  had  seated  herself  so  that  the  light  fell 
caressingly  upon  her  yellow  hair  and  deepened  into 
exquisite  attractiveness  the  soft  shadows  of  her  throat 
and  neck.  Her  arms  were  sleeveless;  and  as  she  leaned 
them  against  the  table,  their  whiteness  and  round- 
ness were  enhanced  by  the  warm  glow. 

The  priest  spoke  in  a  low  monotonous  voice, 
explaining   doctrines,   elucidating    mysteries,   and  em- 


162  WOOD  AND   STONE 

phasizing  moral  lessons.  He  spoke  of  baptism.  He 
described  the  manner  in  which  the  Church  had  appro- 
priated to  her  own  purpose  so  many  ancient  pagan 
customs.  He  showed  how  the  immemorial  heathen 
usages  of  "immersion"  and  "ablution"  had  become, 
in  her  hands,  wonderful  and  suggestive  symbols  of 
the  purifying  power  of  the  nobler  elements.  He  used 
words  that  he  had  come,  by  frequent  repetition,  to 
know  by  heart.  In  order  that  he  might  point  out 
to  her  passages  in  his  authors  which  lent  themselves 
to  the  subject,  he  brought  his  chair  round  to  her 
side. 

The  sound  of  her  gentle  breathing,  and  the  ter- 
rible attraction  of  her  whole  figure,  as  she  leant 
forward,  in  sweet  girlish  attention  to  what  he  was 
saying,  maddened  the  poor  priest. 

In  her  secret  heart  Gladys  hardly  understood  a 
single  word.  The  phrase  "immersion,"  whenever  it 
occurred,  gave  her  an  irresistible  desire  to  laugh.  She 
could  not  help  thinking  of  her  favourite  round  pond. 
The  pond  set  her  thinking  of  Lacrima  and  how 
amusing  it  was  to  frighten  her.  But  this  lesson  with 
the  young  clergyman  was  even  more  amusing.  She 
felt  instinctively  that  it  was  upon  herself  his  atten- 
tion rested,  whatever  mysterious  words  might  pass 
his  lips. 

Once,  as  they  were  leaning  together  over  the 
"Development  of  Christian  Doctrine,"  and  he  was 
enlarging  upon  the  gradual  evolution  of  one  sacred 
implication  after  another,  she  let  her  arm  slide  lightly 
over  the  back  of  his  hand;  and  a  savage  thrill  of 
triumph  rose  in  her  heart,  as  she  felt  an  answering 
magnetic  shiver  run  through  his  whole  frame. 


THE   MYTHOLOGY  OF  POWER    163 

"The  worship  of  the  Body  of  our  Saviour,"  he 
said  —  using  his  own  words  as  a  shield  against  her  — 
"allows  no  subterfuges,  no  reserves.  It  gathers  to 
itself,  as  it  sweeps  down  the  ages,  every  emotion, 
every  ardour,  every  passion  of  man.  It  appropriates 
all  that  is  noble  in  these  things  to  its  own  high  pur- 
pose, and  it  makes  even  of  the  evil  in  them  a  means 
to  yet  more  subtle  good." 

As  he  spoke,  with  an  imperceptible  gesture  of 
liberation  he  rose  from  his  seat  by  her  side  and  set 
himself  to  pace  the  room.  The  struggle  he  was 
making  caused  his  fingers  to  clench  and  re-clench 
themselves  in  the  palms  of  his  hands,  as  though  he 
were  squeezing  the  perfume  from  handfuls  of  scented 
leaves. 

The  high-spirited  girl  knew  by  instinct  the  suffer- 
ing she  was  causing,  but  she  did  not  yield  to  any 
ridiculous  pity.  She  only  felt  the  necessity  of  holding 
him  yet  more  firmly.  So  she  too  rose  from  her  chair, 
and,  slipping  softly  to  the  window,  seated  herself 
sideways  upon  its  ledge.  Balanced  charmingly  here 
—  like  some  wood-nymph  stolen  from  the  forest  to 
tease  the  solitude  of  some  luckless  hermit  —  she 
stretched  one  arm  out  of  the  window,  and  pulling 
towards  her  a  delicate  branch  of  yellow  roses,  pressed 
it  against  her  breast. 

The  pose  of  her  figure,  as  she  balanced  herself 
thus,  was  one  of  provoking  attractiveness,  and  with 
a  furtive  look  of  feline  patience  in  her  half-shut  eyes 
she  waited  while  it  threw  its  spell  over  him. 

The  scent  of  burning  weeds  floated  into  the  room. 
Clavering's  thoughts  whirled  to  and  fro  in  his  head 
like   whipped   chaff.      "I   must  go   on   speaking,"   he 


164  WOOD   AXD   STONE 

thought;  "and  I  must  not  look  at  her.  If  I  look  at 
her  I  am  lost."  He  paced  the  room  like  a  caged 
animal.  His  soul  cried  out  within  him  to  be  liber- 
ated from  the  body  of  this  death.  He  thought  of 
the  strange  tombstone  of  Gideon  Andersen,  and 
wished  he  too  were  buried  under  it,  and  free  forever! 

"Yet  is  it  not  my  duty  to  look  at  her?"  the  devil 
in  his  heart  whispered.  "How  can  I  teach  her,  how 
can  I  influence  her  for  good,  if  I  do  not  see  the  effect 
of  my  words.''  Is  it  not  an  insult  to  the  Master 
Himself,  and  His  Divine  power,  to  be  thus  cowardly 
and  afraid.'*" 

His  steps  faltered  and  he  leant  against  the  table. 

"Christ,"  he  found  his  lips  repeating,  "is  the  ex- 
planation of  all  mysteries.  He  is  the  secret  root 
of  all  natural  impulses  in  us.  All  emerge  from  Him 
and  all  return  to  Him.  He  is  to  us  what  their  ancient 
god  Pan  was  to  the  Greeks.  He  is  in  a  true  sense 
our  All  —  for  in  him  is  all  we  are,  all  we  have,  and 
all  we  hope.  All  our  passions  are  His.  Touched  by 
Him,  their  true  originator,  they  lose  their  dross,  are 
purged  of  their  evil,  and  give  forth  sweet-smelling, 
sweet-breathing  —  yellow  roses!" 

He  had  not  intended  to  say  "yellow  roses."  The 
sentence  had  rounded  itself  off  so,  apart  from  his 
conscious  will. 

The  girl  gravely  indicated  that  she  heard  him;  and 
then  smiled  dreamily,  acquiescingly  —  the  sort  of 
smile  that  yields  to  a  spiritual  idea,  as  if  it  were  a 
physical  caress. 

The  scent  of  burning  weeds  continued  to  float  in 
through  the  window.  "Oh,  it  has  gone!"  she  cried 
suddenly,    as,    released   from    her   fingers,    the    branch 


THE   MYTHOLOGY  OF  POWER    165 

swung  back  to  its  place  against  the  sand-stone 
wall. 

"I  must  have  it  again,"  she  added,  bending  her 
supple  body  backwards.  She  made  one  or  two  inef- 
fectual efforts  and  then  gave  up,  panting.  "I  can't 
reach  it,"  she  said.  "But  go  on,  Mr.  Clavering.  I 
can  listen  to  you  like  this.     It  is  so  nice  out  here." 

Strange  unfathomable  thoughts  surged  up  in  the 
depths  of  Clavering's  soul.  He  found  himself  wishing 
that  he  had  authority  over  her,  that  he  might  tame 
her  wilful  spirit,  and  lay  her  under  the  yoke  of  some 
austere  penance.  Why  was  she  free  to  provoke  him 
thus,  with  her  merciless  fragility?  The  madness  she 
was  arousing  grew  steadily  upon  him.  He  stumbled 
awkwardly  round  the  edge  of  the  table  and  ap- 
proached her.  The  scent  of  burning  weeds  became 
yet  more  emphatic.  To  make  his  nearness  to  her 
less  obvious,  and  out  of  a  queer  mechanical  instinct 
to  allay  his  own  conscience,  he  continued  his  spiritual 
admonitions,  even  when  he  was  quite  close  —  even 
when  he  could  have  touched  her  with  his  hand.  And 
it  would  be  so  easy  to  touch  her!  The  playful 
perilousness  of  her  position  in  the  window  made  such 
a  movement  natural,  justifiable,  almost  conventional. 

"The  true  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation,"  his  lips  re- 
peated, "is  not  that  something  contrary  to  nature 
has  happened;  it  is  that  the  innermost  secret  of 
Nature  has  been  revealed.  And  this  secret,"  —  here 
his  fingers  closed  feverishly  on  the  casement-latch  — 
is  identical  with  the  force  that  swings  the  furthest 
star,  and  drives  the  sap  through  the  veins  of  all  living 
things." 

It    would    have    been    of    considerable    interest    to 


166  AYOOD   AND   STOXE 

a  student  of  religious  psychology  —  like  Mr.  Taxater 
for  example  —  to  observe  how  the  phrases  that 
mechanically  passed  Clavering's  lips  at  this  juncture 
were  all  phrases  drawn  from  the  works  of  rational- 
istic modernists.  He  had  recently  been  reading  the 
charming  and  subtle  essays  of  Father  Mervyn;  and 
the  soft  and  melodious  harmonies  of  that  clever 
theologian's  thought  had  accumulated  in  some  hidden 
corner  of  his  brain.  The  authentic  religious  emotion 
in  him  being  superseded  by  a  more  powerful  impulse, 
his  mind  mechanically  reverted  to  the  large,  dim 
regions  of  mystical  speculation.  A  certain  instinct 
in  him  —  the  instinct  of  his  clamorous  senses  —  made 
him  careful  to  blur,  confuse,  and  keep  far  back,  that 
lovely  and  terrible  "Power  from  Outside,"  the  hem 
of  Whose  garments  he  had  clung  to,  the  night 
before.  "Christ,"  he  went  on,  "is,  as  it  were,  the 
centre  and  pivot  of  the  whole  universe,  and  every 
revelation  granted  to  us  of  His  nature  is  a  revelation 
from  the  system  of  things  itself.  I  want  you  to 
understand  that  our  true  attitude  towards  this  great 
mystery,  ought  to  be  the  attitude  of  scientific  ex- 
plorers, who  in  searching  for  hidden  causes  have 
come  upon  the  one,  the  unique  Cause." 

The  girl's  only  indication  that  she  embraced  the 
significance  of  these  solemn  words  was  to  make  a 
sudden  gliding  serpentine  movement  which  brought 
her  into  a  position  more  easy  to  be  retained,  and 
yet  one  that  made  it  still  more  unnatural  that  he 
should  refuse  her  some  kind  of  playful  and  affectionate 
support. 

The  poor  priest's  heart  beat  tumultuously.  He 
began  to  lose  all  consciousness  of  everything  except 


THE   MYTHOLOGY  OF  POWER    167 

his  propinquity  to  his  provoker.  He  was  aware 
with  appalling  distinctness  of  the  precise  texture 
of  the  light  frock  that  she  wore.  It  was  of  a 
soft  fawn  colour,  crossed  by  wavy  lines  of  a  darker 
tint.  He  watched  the  way  these  wavy  lines  fol- 
lowed the  curves  of  her  figure.  They  began  at 
her  side,  and  ended  where  her  skirt  hung  loose 
over  her  little  swinging  ankles.  He  wished  these 
lines  had  sloped  upwards,  instead  of  downwards;  then 
it  would  have  been  so  much  easier  for  him  to  fol- 
low the  argument  of  the  "Development  of  Christian 
Doctrine." 

Still  that  scent  of  burning  weeds!  Why  must  his 
neighbours  set  fire  to  their  rubbish,  on  this  particular 
afternoon.'' 

With  a  fierce  mental  effort  he  tried  to  suppress 
the  thought  that  those  voluptuous  lips  only  waited 
for  him  to  overcome  his  ridiculous  scruples.  Why 
must  she  wait  like  this  so  pitilessly  passive,  laying 
all  the  burden  of  the  struggle  upon  him?  If  she 
would  only  make  a  little  —  a  very  little  —  move- 
ment, his  conscience  would  be  able  to  recover  its 
equilibrium,  whatever  happened.  He  tried  to  un- 
magnetize  her  attraction,  by  visualizing  the  fact  that 
under  this  desirable  form  —  so  near  his  touch  — 
lurked  nothing  but  that  bleak,  bare,  last  outline  of 
mortality,  to  which  all  flesh  must  come.  He  tried 
to  see  her  forehead,  her  closed  eyes,  her  parted 
lips,  as  they  would  look  if  resting  in  a  coffin.  Like 
his  monkish  predecessors  in  the  world-old  struggle 
against  Satan,  he  sought  to  save  himself  by  clutching 
fast  to  the  grinning  skull. 

All    this    while    his    lips    went    on    repeating    their 


168 WOOD   AND   STONE 

liturgical  formula.  "We  must  learn  to  look  upon  the 
Redemption,  as  a  natural,  not  a  supernatural  fact. 
We  must  learn  to  see  in  it  the  motive-force  of  the 
whole  stream  of  evolution.  We  must  remember  that 
things  are  what  they  have  it  in  them  to  become. 
It  is  the  purpose,  the  end,  which  is  the  true  truth 
—  not  the  process  or  the  method.  Christ  is  the  end 
of  all  things.  He  is  therefore  the  beginning  of  all 
things.  All  things  find  their  meaning,  their  place, 
their  explanation,  only  in  relation  to  Him.  He  is 
the  reality  of  the  illusion  which  we  call  Nature, 
and  of  the  illusion  which  we  call  Life.  In  Him  the 
universe  becomes  real  and  living  —  which  else  were 
a  mere  engine  of  destruction."  How  much  longer 
he  would  have  continued  in  this  strain  —  conquered 
yet  still  resisting  —  it  were  impossible  to  say.  All 
these  noble  words,  into  the  rhythm  of  which  so 
much  passionate  modern  thought  had  been  poured, 
fell  from  his  lips  like  sand  out  of  a  sieve. 

The  girl  herself  interrupted  him.  With  a  quick 
movement  she  suddenly  jerked  herself  from  her  re- 
cumbent position;  jumped,  without  his  help,  lightly 
down  upon  the  floor,  and  resumed  her  former  place 
at  the  table.  The  explanation  of  this  virtuous  re- 
treat soon  made  itself  known  in  the  person  of  a 
visitor  advancing  up  the  garden.  Clavering,  who 
had  stumbled  foolishly  aside  as  she  changed  her 
place,  now  opened  the  door  and  went  to  meet  the 
new-comer. 

It  was  Romer's  manager,  Mr.  Thomas  Lickwit, 
discreet,  obsequious,  fawning,  as  ever,  —  but  with 
a  covert  malignity  in  his  hurried  words.  "Sorry  to 
disturb  you,  sir.     I  see  it  is  Miss  Gladys'  lesson.     I 


THE   MYTHOLOGY   OF  POWER    1G9 

hope  the  young  hidy  is  getting  on  nicely,  sir.  I 
won't  detain  you  for  more  than  a  moment.  I  have 
just  a  little  matter  that  couldn't  wait.  Business  is 
business,  you  know." 

Clavering  felt  as  though  he  had  heard  this  last 
observation  repeated  "ad  nauseam"  by  all  the  dis- 
gusting sycophants  in  all  the  sensational  novels  he 
had  ever  read.  It  occurred  to  him  how  closely  Mr. 
Lickwit  really  did  resemble  all  these  monotonously 
unpleasant  people. 

"Yes,"  went  on  the  amiable  man,  "business  is 
business  —  even  with  reverend  gentlemen  like  your- 
self who  have  better  things  to  attend  to."  Clavering 
forced  himself  to  smile  in  genial  appreciation  of  this 
airy  wit,  and  beckoned  the  manager  into  his  study. 
He  then  returned  to  the  front  room.  "I  am  afraid 
our  lesson  must  end  for  to-night,  Miss  Romer," 
he  said.  "You  know  enough  of  this  lieutenant 
of  your  father's  to  guess  that  he  will  not  be  easy 
to  get  rid  of.  The  worst  of  a  parson's  life  are  these 
interruptions." 

There  was  no  smile  upon  his  face  as  he  said  this, 
but  the  girl  laughed  merrily.  She  adjusted  her  hat 
with  a  deliciously  coquettish  glance  at  him  through 
the  permissible  medium  of  the  gilt-framed  mirror. 
Then  she  turned  and  held  out  her  hand.  "Till  next 
week,  then,  Mr.  Clavering.  And  I  will  read  all  those 
books  you  sent  up  for  me  —  even  the  great  big  black 
one!" 

He  gravely  opened  the  door  for  her,  and  with  a 
sigh  from  a  heart  "sorely  charged,"  returned  to  face 
Mr.    Lickwit. 

He   found    that   gentleman    comfortably    ensconced 


170  WOOD   AND   STONE 

in  the  only  arm-chair.  *'It  is  like  this,  sir,"  said 
the  man,  when  Clavering  had  taken  a  seat  opposite 
him.  "Mr.  Romer  thinks  it  would  be  a  good  thing 
if  this  Social  Meeting  were  put  a  stop  to.  There 
has  been  talk,  sir.  I  will  not  conceal  it  from  you. 
There  has  been  talk.  The  people  say  that  you 
have  allied  yourself  with  that  troublesome  agitator. 
You  know  the  man  I  refer  to,  sir,  that  wretched 
Wone. 

"  Mr,  Romer  doesn't  approve  of  what  he  hears  of 
these  meetings.  He  doesn't  see  as  how  they  serve  any 
good  purpose.  He  thinks  they  promote  discord  in 
the  place,  and  set  one  class  against  another.  He  does 
not  like  the  way,  neither,  that  Mr.  Quincunx  has 
been  going  on  down  there;  nor  to  say  the  truth,  sir, 
do  /  like  that  gentleman's  doings  very  well.  He 
speaks  too  free,  does  Mr.  Quincunx,  much  too  free, 
considering  how  he  is  situated  as  you  might  say." 

Clavering  leapt  to  his  feet,  trembling  with  anger. 
*'I  cannot  understand  this,"  he  said,  "Someone  has 
been  misleading  Mr.  Romer.  The  Social  Meeting 
is  an  old  institution  of  this  village;  and  though  it  is 
not  exactly  a  church  affair,  I  believe  it  is  almost 
entirely  frequented  by  church-goers.  I  have  always 
felt  that  it  served  an  invaluable  purpose  in  this  place. 
It  is  indeed  the  only  occasion  when  priest  and  people 
can  meet  on  equal  terms  and  discuss  these  great 
questions  man  to  man.  No  —  no,  Lickwit,  I  cannot 
for  a  moment  consent  to  the  closing  of  the  Social 
Meeting.  It  would  undo  the  work  of  years.  It 
would  be  utterly  unwise.  In  fact  it  would  be  wrong. 
I  cannot  think  how  you  can  come  to  me  with  such  a 
proposal." 


THE   MYTHOLOGY  OF  POWER    171 

Mr.  Lickwit  made  no  movement  beyond  causing 
his  hat  to  twirl  round  on  the  top  of  the  stick  he  held 
between  his  knees. 

"You  will  think  better  of  it,  sir.  You  will  think 
better  of  it,"  he  said.  "The  election  is  coming  on, 
and  Mr.  Romer  expects  all  supporters  of  Church  and 
State  to  help  him  in  his  campaign.  You  have  heard 
he  is  standing,  sir,  I  suppose.'*" 

Mr.  Lickwit  uttered  the  word  "standing"  in  a 
tone  which  suggested  to  Clavering's  mind  a  grotesque 
image  of  the  British  Constitution  resting  like  an  enor- 
mous cornucopia  on  the  head  of  the  owner  of  Leo's 
Hill.  He  nodded  and  resumed  his  seat.  The  manager 
continued.  "That  old  Methodist  chapel  where  those 
meetings  are  held,  belongs,  as  you  know,  to  Mr. 
Romer.  He  is  thinking  of  having  it  pulled  down  — 
not  only  because  of  Wone's  and  Quincunx's  goings  on 
there,  but  because  he  wants  the  ground.  He's  think- 
ing of  building  an  estate-office  on  that  corner.  We 
are  pressed  for  room,  up  at  the  Hill,  sir." 

Once  more  Clavering  rose  to  his  feet.  "This  is  too 
much!"  he  cried.  "I  wonder  you  have  the  im- 
pertinence to  come  here  and  tell  me  such  things.  I 
am  not  to  be  bullied,  Lickwit.  Understand  that! 
I  am  not  to  be  bullied." 

"Then'  I  may  tell  the  master,"  said  the  man  sneer- 
ingly,  rising  in  his  turn  and  making  for  the  door, 
"that  Mr.  Parson  won't  have  nothing  to  do  with 
our  little  plan?" 

"You  may  tell  him  what  you  please,  Lickwit.  I 
shall  go  over  myself  at  once  to  the  House  and  see 
Mr.  Romer."  He  glanced  at  his  watch.  "It  is  not 
seven  yet,  and  I  know  he  does  not  dine  till  eight." 


172  WOOD   AND   STONE 

"By  all  means,  sir,  by  all  means!  He'll  be  ex- 
tremely glad  to  see  you.  You  couldn't  do  better,  sir. 
You'll  excuse  me  if  I  don't  walk  up  with  you.  I  have 
to  run  across  and  speak  to  Mr.  Goring." 

He  bowed  himself  out  and  hurried  off.  Clavering 
seized  his  hat  and  followed  him,  turning,  however, 
when  once  in  the  street,  in  the  direction  of  the  south 
drive.  It  took  him  scarcely  a  couple  of  minutes  to 
reach  the  village  square  where  the  drive  emerged. 
In  the  centre  of  the  square  stood  a  solid  erection  of 
Leonian  stone  adapted  to  the  double  purpose  of  a 
horse-trough  and  a  drinking  fountain.  Here  the 
girls  came  to  draw  water,  and  here  the  lads  came  to 
chat  and  flirt  with  the  girls.  Mr.  Clavering  could 
not  help  pausing  in  his  determined  march  to  watch 
a  group  of  young  people  engaged  in  animated  and 
laughing  frivolity  at  this  spot.  It  was  a  man  and 
two  girls.  He  recognized  the  man  at  once  by  his 
slight  figure  and  lively  gestures.  It  was  Luke  Ander- 
sen. "That  fellow  has  a  bad  influence  in  this  place," 
he  said  to  himself.  "He  takes  advantage  of  his 
superior  education  to  unsettle  these  children's  minds. 
I  must  stop  this."  He  moved  slowly  towards  the 
fountain.  Luke  Andersen  looked  indeed  as  reckless 
and  engaging  as  a  young  faun  out  of  a  heathen 
story.  He  was  making  a  cup  of  his  two  hands  and 
whimsically  holding  up  the  water  to  the  lips  of  the 
younger  of  his  companions,  while  the  other  one  giggled 
and  fluttered  round  them.  Had  the  priest  been  in 
a  poetic  humour  at  that  moment,  he  might  have 
been  reminded  of  those  queer  mediaeval  legends  of 
the  wanderings  of  the  old  dispossessed  divinities. 
The  young  stone-carver,   with  his  classic  profile  and 


THE   MYTHOLOGY   OF  POWER    173 

fair  curly  hair,  might  have  passed  for  a  disguised 
Dionysus  seducing  to  his  perilous  service  the  women 
of  some  rustic  Thessalian  hamlet.  No  pleasing  image 
of  this  kind  crossed  Hugh  Clavering's  vision.  All  he 
saw,  as  he  approached  the  fountain,  was  another 
youthful  incarnation  of  the  dangerous  Power  he  had 
been  wrestling  with  all  the  afternoon.  He  advanced 
towards  the  engaging  Luke,  much  as  Christian  might 
have  advanced  towards  Apollyon.  "Good  evening, 
Andersen,"  he  said,  with  a  certain  professional  sever- 
ity. "Using  the  fountain,  I  see?  We  must  be  careful, 
though,  not  to   waste   the  water  this  hot  summer." 

The  girl  who  was  drinking  rose  up  with  a  little 
start,  and  stood  blushing  and  embarrassed.  Luke 
appeared  entirely  at  his  ease.  He  leant  negligently 
against  the  edge  of  the  stone  trough,  and  pushed  his 
hat  to  the  back  of  his  head.  In  this  particular  pose 
he  resembled  to  an  extraordinary  degree  the  famous 
Capitolian  statue. 

"It  is  hardly  wasting  the  water,  Mr.  Clavering," 
he  said  with  a  smile,  "offering  it  to  a  beautiful 
mouth.  Why  don't  you  curtsey  to  Mr.  Clavering, 
Annie?  I  thought  all  you  girls  curtsied  when  clergy- 
men spoke  to  you." 

The  priest  frowned.  The  audacious  aplomb  of  the 
young  man  unnerved  and  disconcerted  him. 

"Water  in  a  stone  fountain  like  this,"  went  on 
the  shameless  youth,  "has  a  peculiar  charm  these 
hot  evenings.  It  makes  you  almost  fancy  you  are 
in  Seville.  Seville  is  a  place  in  Spain,  Annie.  Mr. 
Clavering  will  tell  you  all  about  it." 

"I  think  Annie  had  better  run  in  to  her  mother 
now,"  said  the  priest  severely. 


174  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"Oh,  that's  all  right,"  replied  the  youth  with  un- 
ruffled urbanity.  "Her  mother  has  gone  shopping  in 
Yeoborough  and  I  have  to  see  that  Annie  behaves 
properly  till  she  comes  back." 

Clavering  looked  reproachfully  at  the  girl.  Some- 
thing about  him  —  his  very  inability  perhaps  to  cope 
with  this  seductive  Dionysus  —  struck  her  simple 
intelligence  as  pathetic.  She  made  a  movement  as 
if  to  join  her  companion,  who  remained  roguishly 
giggling  a  few  paces  ofiF.  But  Luke  boldly  restrained 
her.  Putting  his  hand  on  her  shoulder  he  said 
laughingly  to  the  priest,  "She  will  be  a  heart-breaker 
one  of  these  days,  Mr.  Clavering,  will  our  Annie 
here!  You  wouldn't  think  she  was  eighteen,  would 
you,  sir?' 

Under  other  circumstances  the  young  clergyman 
would  have  unhesitatingly  commanded  the  girl  to  go 
home.  But  his  recent  experiences  had  loosened  the 
fibre  of  his  moral  courage.  Besides,  what  was  there 
to  prevent  this  incorrigible  young  man  from  walking 
off  after  her?  One  could  hardly  —  at  least  in  Protes- 
tant England  —  make  one's  flock  moral  by  sheer 
force. 

"Well  —  good-night  to  you  all,"  he  said,  and 
moved  away,  thinking  to  himself  that  at  any  rate 
there  was  safety  in  publicity.  "But  what  a  danger- 
ous person  that  Andersen  is!  One  never  knows  how 
to  deal  with  these  half-and-half  people.  If  he  were 
a  village-boy  it  would  be  different.  And  it  would  be 
different  if  he  were  a  gentleman.  But  he  is  neither 
one  thing  or  the  other.  Seville!  Who  would  have 
thought  to  have  heard  Seville  referred  to,  in  the 
middle  of  Nevilton  Square?" 


THE  MYTHOLOGY  OF  POWER    175 


He  reached  the  carved  entrance  of  the  House  with 
its  deeply-cut  armorial  bearings  —  the  Seldom  falcon 
with  the  arrow  in  its  beak.  "No  more  will  that  bird 
fly,"  he  thought,  as  he  waited  for  the  door  to  open. 

He  was  ushered  into  the  spacious  entrance  hall, 
the  usual  place  of  reception  for  Mr.  Romer's  less 
favoured  guests.  The  quarry-owner  was  alone.  He 
shook  hands  affably  with  his  visitor  and  motioned 
him  to  a  seat. 

"I  have  come  about  that  question  of  the  Social 
Meeting — "  he  began. 

Mr.  Romer  cut  him  short.  "It  is  no  longer  a 
question,"  he  said.  "It  is  a  'fait  accomph.'  I  have 
given  orders  to  have  the  place  pulled  down  next 
week.      I    want    the    space    for    building    purposes." 

Clavering  turned  white  with  anger.  "We  shall  have 
to  find  another  room  then,"  he  said.  "I  cannot 
have  those  meetings  dropping  out  from  our  village 
life.  They  keep  the  thoughtful  people  together  as 
nothing  else  can." 

Mr.  Romer  smiled  grimly.  "You  will  find  it  diffi- 
cult to  discover  another  place,"  he  remarked. 

"Then  I  shall  have  them  in  my  own  house,"  said 
the  vicar  of  Nevilton, 

Mr.  Romer  crossed  his  hands  and  threw  back  his 
head;  looking,  with  the  air  of  one  who  watches  the 
development  of  precisely  foreseen  events,  straight 
into  the  sad  eyes  of  the  little  Royal  Servant  on  the 
wall. 

"Pardon  such  a  question,  my  friend,"  said  he,  "but 
may  I  ask  you  what  your  personal  income  is,  at  this 
moment.''" 

"You  know  that  well  enough,"  returned  the  other. 


176  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"I  have  nothing  beyond  the  hundred  and  fifty 
pounds  I  receive  as  vicar  of  this  place." 

*'And  what,"  pursued  the  Quarry-owner,  "may 
your  expenditure  amount  to?" 

"That,  also,  you  know  well,"  replied  Clavering. 
"I  give  away  about  eighty  pounds,  every  year,  to 
the  poor  of  this  village." 

"And  where  does  this  eighty  pounds  come  from?" 
went  on  the  Squire.     The  priest  was  silent. 

"I  will  tell  you  where  it  comes  from,"  pronounced 
the  other.  "It  comes  from  me.  It  is  my  contribu- 
tion, out  of  the  tithes  which  I  receive  as  lay-rector. 
And  it  is  the  larger  part  of  them." 

The  priest  was  still  silent. 

"When  I  first  came  here,"  his  interlocutor  con- 
tinued, "I  gave  up  these  tithes  as  an  offering  to  our 
village  necessities;  and  I  have  not  yet  withdrawn 
them.  If  this  Social  Meeting,  Mr.  Clavering,  is  not 
brought  to  an  end,  I  shall  withdraw  them.  And  no 
one  will  be  able  to  blame  me." 

Hugh  jumped  up  on  his  feet  with  a  gesture  of 
fury.  "I  call  this,"  he  shouted,  "nothing  short  of 
sacrilege!  Yes,  sacrilege  and  tyranny!  I  shall  pro- 
claim it  abroad.  I  shall  write  to  the  papers.  I  shall 
appeal  to  the  bishop  —  to  the  country!" 

"As  you  please,"  said  Mr.  Romer  quietly,  "as  you 
please.  I  should  only  like  to  point  out  that  any 
action  of  this  kind  will  tie  up  my  purse-strings  for- 
ever. You  will  not  be  popular  with  your  flock,  my 
friend.  I  know  something  of  our  dear  Nevilton 
people;  and  I  shall  have  only  to  make  it  plain  to 
them  that  it  is  their  vicar  who  has  reduced  this 
charity;  and  you  will  not  find  yourself  greatly  loved!" 


THE  MYTHOLOGY  OF  POWER    177 

Clavering  fell  back  into  his  chair  with  a  groan. 
He  knew  too  well  the  truth  of  the  man's  words.  He 
knew  also  the  straits  into  which  this  lack  of  money 
would  plunge  half  his  benevolent  activities  in  the 
parish.  He  hung  his  head  gloomily  and  stared  at  the 
floor.  What  would  he  not  have  given,  at  that  mo- 
ment, to  have  been  able  to  meet  this  despot,  man  to 
man,  unencumbered  by  his  duty  to  his  people! 

"Let  me  assure  you,  my  dear  sir,"  said  Mr.  Romer 
quietly,  "that  you  are  not  by  any  means  fighting 
the  cause  of  your  church,  in  supporting  this  wretched 
Meeting.  If  I  were  bidding  you  interrupt  your 
services  or  your  sacraments,  it  would  be  another 
matter.  This  Social  Meeting  has  strong  anti-clerical 
prejudices.  You  know  that,  as  well  as  I.  It  is 
conducted  entirely  on  noncomformist  lines.  I  hap- 
pen to  be  aware,"  he  added,  "since  you  talk  of 
appealing  to  the  bishop,  that  the  good  man  has  al- 
ready, on  more  than  one  occasion,  protested  vigor- 
ously against  the  association  of  his  clergy  with  this 
kind  of  organization.  I  do  not  know  whether  you 
ever  glance  at  that  excellent  paper  the  Guardian; 
but  if  so  you  will  find,  in  this  last  week's  issue,  a 
very  interesting  case,  quite  parallel  to  ours,  in  which 
the  bishop's  sympathies  were  by  no  means  on  the 
side  you  are  advocating." 

The  young  priest  rose  and  bowed.  "There  is,  at 
any  rate,  no  necessity  for  me  to  trouble  you  any 
further,"  he  said.  "So  I  will  bid  you  good- 
night." 

He  left  the  hall  hastily,  picked  up  his  hat,  and  let 
himself  out,  before  his  host  had  time  to  reply.  All 
the  way  down  the  drive  his  thoughts  reverted  to  the 


178  WOOD  AND   STONE 

seductive  wiles  of  this  despot's  daughter.  "The 
saints  are  deserting  me,"  he  thought,  "by  reason  of 
my  sin." 

He  was  not,  even  then,  destined  to  escape  his 
temptress.  Gladys,  who  doubtless  had  been  expect- 
ing this  sudden  retreat,  emerged  from  the  shadow  of 
the  trees  and  intercepted  him.  "I  will  walk  to  the 
gate  with  you,"  she  said.  The  power  of  feminine 
attraction  is  never  more  insidious  than  at  the  mo- 
ment of  bitter  remorse.  The  mind  reverts  so  easily, 
so  willingly,  then,  back  to  the  dangerous  way.  The 
mere  fact  of  its  having  lost  its  pride  of  resistance,  its 
vanity  of  virtue,  makes  it  yield  to  a  new  assault  with 
terrible  facility.  She  drew  him  into  the  dusky  twi- 
light of  the  scented  exotic  cedars  which  bordered  the 
way,  on  the  excuse  of  inhaling  their  fragrance  more 
closely. 

She  made  him  pull  down  a  great  perfumed  cypress- 
bough,  of  some  unusual  species,  so  that  they  might 
press  their  faces  against  it.  They  stood  so  closely 
together  that  she  could  feel  through  her  thin  evening- 
gown  the  furious  trembling  that  seized  him.  She  knew 
that  he  had  completely  lost  his  self-control,  and  was 
quite  at  her  mercy.  But  Gladys  had  not  the  least 
intention  of  yielding  herself  to  the  emotion  she  had 
excited.  What  she  intended  was  that  he  should 
desire  her  to  desperation,  not  that,  by  the  least 
touch,  his  desire  should  be  gratified.  In  another 
half-second,  as  she  well  knew,  the  poor  priest  would 
have  seized  her  in  his  arms.  In  place  of  permitting 
this,  what  she  did  was  to  imprint  a  fleeting  kiss  with 
her  warm  lips  upon  the  back  of  his  hand,  and  then 
to  leap  out  of  danger  with  a  ringing  laugh.     "Good- 


THE   MYTHOLOGY  OF   POWER    179 


bye!"  she  called   back  at  him,  as  she  ran  off.     "I'll 
come  in  good  time  next  week." 

It  may  be  imagined  in  what  a  turbulence  of  miser- 
able feelings  Hugh  Clavering  repassed  the  village 
square.  He  glanced  quickly  at  the  fountain.  Yes! 
Luke  Andersen  was  still  loitering  in  the  same  place, 
and  the  little  bursts  of  suppressed  screams  and 
laughter,  and  the  little  fluttering  struggles,  of  the 
group  around  him,  indicated  that  he  was  still,  in  his 
manner,  corrupting  the  maidens  of  Nevilton.  The 
priest  longed  to  put  his  hands  to  his  ears  and  run 
down  the  street,  even  as  Christian  ran  from  the 
city  of  Destruction.  What  was  this  power  —  this  in- 
vincible, all-pervasive  power  —  against  which  he  had 
committed  himself  to  contend?  He  felt  as  though 
he  were  trying,  with  his  poor  human  strength,  to 
hold  back  the  sea-tide,  so  that  it  should  not  cover 
the  sands. 

Could  it  be  that,  after  all,  the  whole  theory  of  the 
church  was  wrong,  and  that  the  great  Life-Force  was 
against  her,  and  punishing  her,  for  seeking,  with 
her  vain  superstitions,  to  alter  the  stars  in  their 
courses? 

Could  it  be  that  this  fierce  pleasure-lust,  which  he 
felt  so  fatally  in  Gladys,  and  saw  in  Luke,  and  was 
seduced  by  in  his  own  veins,  was  after  all  the  true 
secret  of  Nature,  and,  to  contend  against  it,  madness 
and  impossible  folly?  Was  he,  and  not  they,  the 
really  morbid  and  infatuated  one  —  morbid  with  the 
arbitrary  pride  of  a  desperate  tradition  of  perverted 
heroic  souls?  He  moved  along  the  pavement  under 
the  church  wall  and  looked  up  at  its  grand  im- 
movable tower.      "Are  you,   too,"  he  thought,   "but 


180  WOOD   AND   STONE 

the  symbol  of  an  insane  caprice  in  the  mad  human 
race,  seeking,  in  fond  recklessness,  to  alter  the  basic 
laws  of  the  great  World?" 

The  casuistical  philosophy  of  Mr.  Taxater  returned 
to  his  mind.  What  would  the  papal  apologist  say 
to  him  now,  thus  torn  and  tugged  at  by  all  the 
forces  of  hell.''  He  felt  a  curious  doubt  in  his  heart 
as  to  the  side  on  which,  in  this  mad  struggle,  the 
astute  theologian  really  stood.  Perhaps,  for  all  his 
learning,  the  man  was  no  more  Christian  in  his  true 
soul,  than  had  been  many  of  those  historic  popes 
whose  office  he  defended.  In  his  desperate  mood 
Clavering  longed  to  get  as  near  as  possible  to  the 
altar  of  this  God  of  his,  who  thus  bade  him  confront 
the  whole  power  of  nature  and  all  the  wisdom  of  the 
world.  He  looked  up  and  down  the  street.  Two  men 
were  talking  outside  The  Goat  and  Boy,  but  their 
backs  were  turned.  With  a  quick  sudden  movement 
he  put  his  hands  on  the  top  of  the  wall  and  scrambled 
hastily  over,  scraping  his  shins  as  he  did  so  on  a 
sharp  stone  at  the  top.  He  moved  rapidly  to  the 
place  where  rose  the  strange  tombstone  designed  by 
the  atheist  carver.  It  was  here  that  Vennie  and  he 
had  entered  into  their  heroic  covenant  only  twenty- 
four  hours  before.  He  looked  at  the  enormous  skull 
so  powerfully  carved  and  at  the  encircled  cross  be- 
neath it.  He  laid  his  hand  upon  the  skull,  precisely 
as  he  had  done  the  night  before;  only  this  time  there 
were  no  little  cold  fingers  to  instil  pure  devotion  into 
him.  Instead  of  the  touch  of  such  fingers  he  felt  the 
burning  contact  of  Gladys'  soft  lips. 

No!  it  was  an  impossible  task  that  his  God  had  laid 
upon  him.      Why  not  give  up  the  struggle.?^     Why  not 


THE   MYTHOLOGY  OF  POWER    181 

throw  over  this  mad  idol  of  purity  he  had  raised  for  his 
worship,  and  yield  himself  to  the  great  stream?  The 
blood  rushed  to  his  head  with  the  alluring  images  that 
this  thought  evoked.  Perhaps,  after  all,  Gladys  would 
marry  him,  and  then  —  why,  then,  he  could  revert 
to  the  humourous  wisdom  of  Mr.  Taxater,  and  culti- 
vate the  sweet  mystical  speculations  of  modernism; 
reconciling,  pleasantly  and  easily,  the  natural  pleasures 
of  the  senses,  with  the  natural  exigencies  of  the  soul! 

He  left  Gideon's  grave  and  walked  back  to  the 
church-porch.  It  was  now  nearly  dark  and  without 
fear  of  being  observed  by  any  one  through  the  iron 
bars  of  the  outer  gate,  he  entered  the  porch  and  stood 
before  the  closed  door.  He  wished  he  had  brought 
the  key  with  him.  How  he  longed,  at  that  moment, 
to  fling  himself  down  before  the  altar  and  cry  aloud 
to  his  God! 

By  his  side  stood  the  wheeled  parish  bier,  orna- 
mented by  a  gilt  inscription,  informing  the  casual 
intruder  that  it  had  been  presented  to  the  place  in 
honour  of  the  accession  of  King  George  the  Fifth. 
There  was  not  light  enough  to  read  these  touching 
words,  but  the  gilt  plate  containing  them  gave  forth 
a  faint  scintillating  glimmer. 

Worn  out  by  the  day-long  struggle  in  his  heart, 
Clavering  sat  down  upon  this  grim  "memento  mori"; 
and  then,  after  a  minute  or  two,  finding  that  position 
uncomfortable,  deliberately  stretched  himself  out  at 
full  length  upon  the  thing's  bare  surface.  Lying  here, 
with  the  bats  flitting  in  and  out  above  his  head,  the 
struggle  in  his  mind  continued.  Supposing  he  did 
yield,  —  not  altogether,  of  course;  his  whole  nature 
was  against  that,  and  his  public  position  stood  in  the 


182  WOOD  AND   STONE 

way,  —  but  just  a  little,  just  a  hair's  breadth,  could 
he  not  enjoy  a  light  playful  flirtation  with  Gladys, 
such  as  she  was  so  obviously  prepared  for,  even  if  it 
were  impossible  to  marry  her?  The  worst  of  it  was 
that  his  imagination  so  enlarged  upon  the  pleasures 
of  this  "playful  flirtation,"  that  it  very  quickly  be- 
came an  obsessing  desire.  He  propped  himself  up 
upon  his  strange  couch  and  looked  forth  into  the 
night.  The  stars  were  just  beginning  to  appear,  and 
he  could  see  one  or  two  constellations  whose  names 
he  knew.  How  indifferent  they  were,  those  far-off 
lights!  What  did  it  matter  to  them  whether  he  yielded 
or  did  not  yield.'^  He  had  the  curious  sensation  that 
the  whole  conflict  in  which  he  was  entangled  belonged 
to  a  terrestial  sphere  infinitely  below  those  heavenly 
luminaries.  Not  only  the  Power  against  which  he 
contended,  but  the  Power  on  whose  side  he  fought, 
seemed  out-distanced  and  derided  by  those  calm 
watchers. 

He  sank  back  again  and  gazed  up  at  the  carved 
stone  roof  above  him.  A  dull  inert  weariness  stole 
over  his  brain;  a  sick  disgust  of  the  whole  mad 
business  of  a  man's  life  upon  earth.  Why  was  he  born 
into  the  world  with  passions  that  he  must  not  satisfy 
and  ideals  that  he  could  not  hold.'*  Better  not  to  have 
been  born  at  all;  or,  being  born,  better  to  lie  quiet 
and  untroubled,  with  all  these  placid  church-yard 
people,  under  the  heavy  clay!  The  mental  weariness 
that  assailed  him  gradually  changed  into  sheer  physi- 
cal drowsiness.  His  head  sought  instinctively  a  more 
easy  position  and  soon  found  what  it  sought.  His 
eyes  closed;  and  there,  upon  the  parish  bier,  worn 
out  with  his   struggle   against  Apollyon,   the  vicar  of 


THE   MYTHOLOGY  OF  POWER    183 

Nevilton  slept.  When  he  returned  to  consciousness 
he  found  himself  cramped,  cold  and  miserable.  Hur- 
riedly he  scrambled  to  his  feet,  stretched  his  stiff 
limbs  and  listened.  The  clock  in  the  Tower  above  him 
began  to  strike.  It  struck  one  —  two  —  and  then 
stopped.     He  had  slept  for  nearly  five  hours. 


CHAPTER   X 
THE  ORCHARD 

EVERY  natural  locality  has  its  hour  of  special 
self-assertion;  its  hour,  when  the  peculiar  quali- 
ties and  characteristics  which  belong  to  it 
emphasize  themselves,  and  attain  a  sort  of  temporary 
apogee  or  culmination.  It  is  then  that  such  localities  — 
be  they  forests  or  moors,  hill-sides  or  valleys  —  seem 
to  gather  themselves  together  and  bring  themselves 
into  focus,  waiting  expectantly,  it  might  almost  seem, 
for  some  answering  dramatic  crisis  in  human  affairs 
which  should   find  in  them  an  inevitable  background. 

One  of  the  chief  features  of  our  English  climate  is 
that  no  two  successive  days,  even  in  a  spell  of  the 
warmest  weather,  are  exactly  alike.  What  one  might 
call  the  culminant  day  of  that  summer,  for  the  or- 
chards of  Nevilton,  arrived  shortly  after  Mr.  Claver- 
ing's  unfortunate  defeat.  Every  hour  of  this  day 
seemed  to  add  something  more  and  more  expressive  to 
their  hushed  and  expectant  solitudes. 

Though  the  hay  had  been  cut,  or  was  being  cut,  in 
the  open  fields,  in  these  shadowy  recesses  the  grass 
was  permitted  to  grow  lush  and  long,  at  its  own 
unimpeded  will. 

Between  the  ancient  trunks  of  the  moss-grown 
apple-trees  hung  a  soft  blue  vapour;  and  the  flicker- 
ing sunlight  that  pierced  the  denser  foliage,  threw 
shadows   upon   the   heavy   grass   that   were  as   deeply 


THE   ORCHARD  185 

purple  as  the  waves  of  the  mid-atlantic.  There 
was  indeed  something  so  remote  from  the  ordinary 
movements  of  the  day  about  this  underworld  of 
dim,  rich  seclusion,  that  the  image  of  a  sleepy  wave- 
lulled  land,  long  sunken  out  of  reach  of  human  in- 
vasion, under  the  ebbing  and  flowing  tide,  seemed 
borne  in  naturally  upon  the  imagination. 

It  was  towards  the  close  of  the  afternoon  of  this 
particular  segment  of  time  that  the  drowsy  languor  of 
these  orchards  reached  its  richest  and  most  luxurious 
moment.  Grass,  moss,  lichen,  mistletoe,  gnarled 
trunks,  and  knotted  roots,  all  seemed  to  cry  aloud, 
at  this  privileged  hour,  for  some  human  recognition  of 
their  unique  quality;  some  human  event  which  should 
give  that  quality  its  dramatic  value,  its  planetary 
proportion.  Not  since  the  Hesperidean  Dragon 
guarded  its  sacred  charge,  in  the  classic  story,  has 
a  more  responsive  background  offered  itself  to  what 
Catullus  calls  the  "furtive  loves"  of  mortal  men. 

About  six  o'clock,  on  this  day  of  the  apogee  of  the 
orchards,  Mr.  Romer,  seated  on  the  north  terrace 
of  his  house,  caught  sight  of  his  daughter  and  her 
companion  crossing  the  near  corner  of  the  park.  He 
got  up  at  once,  and  walked  across  the  garden  to  inter- 
cept them.  The  sight  of  the  Italian's  slender  droop- 
ing figure,  as  she  lingered  a  little  behind  her  cousin, 
roused  into  vivid  consciousness  all  manner  of  subter- 
ranean emotions  in  the  quarry-owner's  mind.  He 
felt  as  an  oriental  pasha  might  feel,  when  under  the 
stress  of  some  political  or  monetary  transaction,  he 
is  compelled  to  hand  over  his  favorite  girl-slave  to 
an  obsequious  dependent.  The  worst  of  it  was  that 
he    could    not    be    absolutely    sure    of    Mr.    Goring's 


186  WOOD   AND   STONE 

continued  adherence.  It  was  within  the  bounds  of 
possibility  that  once  in  possession  of  Lacrima,  the 
farmer  might  breathe  against  him  gross  Thersites- 
like  defiance,  and  carry  off  his  captive  to  another 
county.  He  experienced,  at  that  moment,  a  sharp 
pang  of  inverted  remorse  at  the  thought  of  having 
to  relinquish  his  prey. 

As  he  strode  along  by  the  edge  of  the  herbaceous 
borders,  where  the  blue  spikes  of  the  delphiniums  were 
already  in  bud,  his  mind  swung  rapidly  from  point 
to  point  in  the  confused  arena  of  his  various  contests 
and  struggles. 

Mixed  strangely  enough  with  his  direct  Napoleonic 
pursuit  of  wealth  and  power,  there  was  latent  in 
Mr.  Romer,  as  we  have  already  hinted,  a  certain 
dark  and  perverse  sensuality,  which  was  capable  of 
betraying  and  distorting,  in  very  curious  ways,  the 
massive  force  of  his  intelligence. 

At  this  particular  moment,  as  he  emerged  into  the 
park,  he  found  himself  beginning  to  regret  his  conver- 
sation with  his  brother-in-law.  But,  after  all,  he 
thought,  when  Gladys  married,  it  would  be  difficult 
to  find  any  reason  for  keeping  Lacrima  at  his  side. 
His  feelings  towards  the  girl  were  a  curious  mixture 
of  attraction  and  hatred.  And  what  could  better 
gratify  this  mixed  emotion  than  a  plan  which  would 
keep  her  within  his  reach  and  at  the  same  time 
humiliate  and  degrade  her?  To  do  the  master  of 
Nevilton  justice,  he  was  not,  at  that  moment,  as  he 
passed  under  a  group  of  Spanish  chestnuts  and  ob- 
served the  object  of  his  conspiracy  rendered  gentler 
and  more  fragile  than  ever  by  the  loveliness  of  her 
surroundings,   altogether  devoid   of   a  certain  remote 


THE   ORCHARD  187 

'eeling  of  compunction.  He  crushed  it  down,  however, 
jy  his  usual  thought  of  the  brevity  and  futility  of 
ill  these  things,  and  the  folly  of  yielding  to  weak 
commiseration,  when,  in  so  short  a  time,  nothing, 
)ne  way  or  the  other,  would  matter  in  the  least! 
He  had  long  ago  trained  himself  to  make  use  of  these 
naterialistic  reasonings  to  suppress  any  irrelevant 
prickings  of  conscience  which  might  interfere  with 
;he  bias  of  his  will.  The  whole  world,  looked  at  with 
;he  bold  cynical  eye  of  one  who  was  not  afraid  to 
ace  the  truth,  was,  after  all,  a  mad,  wild,  unmeaning 
;truggle;  and,  in  the  confused  arena  of  this  struggle, 
)ne  could  be  sure  of  nothing  but  the  pleasure  one 
lerived  from  the  sensation  of  one's  own  power.  He 
;ried,  as  he  walked  towards  the  girls,  to  imagine  to 
limself  what  his  feelings  would  be,  supposing  he  yielded 
;o  these  remote  scruples,  and  let  Lacrima  go,  giving 
ler  money,  for  instance,  to  enable  her  to  live  inde- 
pendently in  her  own  country,  or  to  marry  whom  she 
jleased.  She  would  no  doubt  marry  that  damned 
ool  Quincunx!  Lack  of  money  was,  assuredly,  all 
;hat  stood  in  the  way.  And  how  could  he  contem- 
)late  an  idea  of  that  kind  with  any  pleasure.''  He 
;vondered,  in  a  grim  humourous  manner,  what  sort  of 
compensation  these  self-sacrificing  ones  really  got.^* 
tVhat  satisfaction  would  he  get,  for  instance,  in  the 
consciousness  that  he  had  thrown  a  girl  who  attracted 
lim,  into  the  arms  of  an  idiot  who  excited  his  hate.'' 

He  looked  long  at  Lacrima,  as  she  stood  with 
jrladys,  under  a  sycamore,  waiting  his  approach.  It 
svas  curious,  he  said  to  himself, — very  curious, — the 
5ort  of  feelings  she  excited  in  him.  It  was  not  that 
le  wished  to  possess  her.     He  was  scornfully  cynical 


188  WOOD  AND   STONE 

of  that  sort  of  gratification.  He  wished  to  do  more 
than  possess  her.  He  wished  to  humihate  her,  to 
degrade  her,  to  put  her  to  shame  in  her  inmost  spirit. 
He  wished  her  to  know  that  he  knew  that  she  was 
suffering  this  shame,  and  that  he  was  the  cause  of  it. 
He  wished  her  to  feel  herself  absolutely  in  his  power, 
not  bodily  —  that  was  nothing!  —  but  morally,  and 
spiritually. 

The  owner  of  Leo's  Hill  had  the  faculty  of  de- 
taching himself  from  his  own  darkest  thoughts,  and 
of  observing  them  with  a  humourous  and  cynical  eye. 
It  struck  him  as  not  a  little  grotesque,  that  he,  the 
manipulater  of  far-flung  financial  intrigues,  the  am- 
bitious politician,  the  formidable  captain  of  industry, 
should  be  thus  scheming  and  plotting  to  satisfy  the 
caprice  of  a  mere  whim,  upon  the  destiny  of  a 
penniless  dependent.  It  was  grotesque  —  grotesque 
and  ridiculous.  Let  it  be!  The  whole  business  of 
living  was  grotesque  and  ridiculous.  One  snatched 
fiercely  at  this  thing  or  the  other,  as  the  world  moved 
round;  and  one  was  not  bound  always  to  present 
oneself  in  a  dignified  mask  before  one's  own  tribunal. 
It  was  enough  that  this  or  that  fantasy  of  the  domi- 
nant power-instinct  demanded  a  certain  course  of 
action.  Let  it  be  as  grotesque  as  it  might!  He,  and 
none  other,  was  the  judge  of  his  pleasure,  of  what  he 
pleased  to  do,  or  to  refrain  from  doing.  It  was  his 
humour;  —  and  that  ended  it!  He  lived  to  fulfil  his 
humour.  There  was  nothing  else  to  live  for,  in  this 
fantastic  chaotic  world!  Meditating  in  this  manner 
he  approached  the  girls. 

"It    occurred    to    me,"    he    said,    breathing   a    little 
hard,   and  addressing  his  daughter,   "that  you   mighl 


THE   ORCHARD  189 

be  seeing  Mr.  Clavering  again  tonight.  If  so,  per- 
haps you  would  give  him  a  message  from  me,  or 
rather,  —  how  shall  I  put  it?  —  a  suggestion,  a 
gentle  hint." 

"What  are  you  driving  at,  father?"  asked  Gladys, 
pouting  her  lips  and  swinging  her  parasol. 

"It  is  a  message  best  delivered  by  mouth,"  Mr. 
Romer  went  on,  "and  by  your  mouth." 

Then  as  if  to  turn  this  last  remark  into  a  delicate 
compliment,  he  playfully  lifted  up  the  girl's  chin 
with  his  finger  and  made  as  if  to  kiss  her.  Gladys, 
however,  lightly  evaded  him,  and  tossing  her  head 
mischievously,  burst  out  laughing.  "I  know  you, 
father,  I  know  you,"  she  cried.  "You  want  me  to 
do  some  intriguing  for  you.  You  never  kiss  me  like 
that,  unless  you  do!" 

Lacrima  glanced  apprehensively  at  the  two  of 
them.  Standing  there,  in  the  midst  of  that  charming 
English  scene,  they  represented  to  her  mind  all  that 
was  remorseless,  pitiless  and  implacable  in  this  island 
of  her  enforced  adoption.  Swiftly,  from  those  ruddy 
pinnacles  of  the  great  house  behind  them,  her  mind 
reverted  to  the  little  white  huts  in  a  certain  Apennine 
valley  and  the  tinkling  bells  of  the  goats  led  back 
from  pasture.  Oh  how  she  hated  all  this  heavy 
foliage  and  these  eternally  murmuring  doves! 

"Well,"  said  Mr.  Romer,  as  Gladys  waited  mock- 
ingly, "I  do  want  you  to  do  something.  I  want  you 
to  hint  to  our  dear  clergyman  that  this  ceremony 
of  your  reception  into  his  church  is  dependent  upon 
his  good  behaviour.  Not  your  good  behavior,"  he 
repeated  smiling,  "but  his.  The  truth  is,  dear  child, 
if  I  may  speak  quite  plainly,  I  know  the  persuasive 


4 


190  WOOD   AND  STONE 

power  of  your  pretty  face  over  all  these  young  men; 
and  I  want  you  to  make  it  plain  to  this  worthy 
priest  that  if  you  are  to  continue  being  nice  to  him, 
he  must  be  very  nice  to  me.  Do  you  catch  my  mean- 
ing, my  plump  little  bird?"  As  he  spoke  he  encircled 
her  waist  with  his  arm.  Lacrima,  watching  them, 
thought  how  singularly  alike  father  and  daughter 
were,  and  was  conscious  of  an  instinctive  desire  to 
run  and  warn  this  new  victim  of  conspiracy. 

"Why,  what  has  he  been  doing,  father.''"  asked 
the  fair  girl,  shaking  herself  free,  and  opening  her 
parasol. 

"He  has  been  supporting  that  fellow  Wone.  And 
he  has  been  talking  nonsense  about  Quincunx,  —  yes, 
about  your  friend  Quincunx,"  he  added,  nodding 
ironically  towards  Lacrima. 

"And  I  am  to  punish  him,  am  I?"  laughed  Gladys. 
"That  is  lovely!  I  love  punishing  people,  especially 
people  like  Mr.  Clavering  who  think  they  are  so 
wonderfully  good!" 

Mr.  Romer  smiled.  "Not  exactly  punish  him, 
dear,  but  lead  him  gently  into  the  right  path.  Lead 
him,  in  fact,  to  see  that  the  party  to  belong  to  in 
this  village  is  the  party  of  capacity  —  not  the  party 
of  chatter." 

Gladys  looked  at  her  father  seriously.  "You  don't 
mean  that  you  are  actually  afraid  of  losing  this  elec- 
tion?" she  said.  Mr.  Romer  stretched  out  his  arm 
and  rested  himself  against  the  umbrageous  sycamore, 
pressing  his  large  firm  hand  upon  its  trunk. 

"Losing  it,  child?  No,  I  shan't  lose  it.  But  these 
idiots  do  really  annoy  me.  They  are  all  such  cowards 
and  such  sentimental  babies.     It  is  people  like  these  who 


THE   ORCHARD  191 

have  to  be  ruled  with  a  firm  hand.  They  cringe  and 
whimper  when  you  talk  to  them;  and  then  the  moment 
your  back  is  turned  they  grow  voluble  and  imperti- 
nent. My  workmen  are  no  better.  They  owe  every- 
thing to  me.  If  it  wasn't  for  me,  half  those  quarries 
would  be  shut  down  tomorrow  and  they'd  be  out  of 
a  job.  But  do  you  think  they  are  grateful?  Not 
a  bit  of  it!"  His  tone  grew  more  angry.  He  felt 
a  need  of  venting  the  suppressed  rage  of  many 
months.  "Yes,  you  needn't  put  on  that  unconscious 
look,  Lacrima.  I  know  well  enough  where  your 
sympathies  lie.  The  fact  is,  in  these  rotten  days, 
it  is  the  incapable  and  miserable  who  give  the  tone 
to  everyone!  No  one  thinks  for  himself.  No  one 
goes  to  the  bottom  of  things.  It  is  all  talk  —  talk  — 
talk;  talk  about  equality,  about  liberty,  about  kind- 
ness to  the  weak.  I  hate  the  weak;  and  I  refuse  to 
let  them  interfere  with  me!  Look  at  the  faces  of  these 
people.  Well,  —  you  know,  Gladys,  what  they  are 
like.  They  are  all  feeble,  bloodless,  sneaking,  fawn- 
ing idiots!  I  hate  the  faces  of  these  Nevilton  fools. 
They  are  always  making  me  think  of  slugs  and  worms. 
This  Wone  is  typical.  His  disgusting  complexion 
and  flabby  mouth  is  characteristic  of  them  all.  No 
one  of  them  has  the  spirit  to  hit  one  properly  back, 
face  to  face.  And  their  odious,  sentimental  religion! — 
This  Clavering  of  yours  ought  to  know  better.  He 
is  not  quite  devoid  of  intelligence.  He  showed  some 
spirit  when  I  talked  with  him.  But  he  is  besotted, 
too,  with  this  silly  nonsense  about  humouring  the 
people,  and  considering  the  people,  and  treating  the 
people  in  a  Christian  spirit!  As  though  you  could 
treat  worms  and  slugs  in  any  other  spirit  than  the 


192  WOOD  AND   STONE 

spirit  of  trampling  upon  them.  They  are  born  to  be 
trampled  upon  —  born  for  it  —  I  tell  you!  You  have 
only  to  look  at  them!"  He  glared  forth  over  the 
soft  rich  fields;  and  continued,  still  more  bitterly: 

"Its  no  good  your  pretending  not  to  hear  me, 
Lacrima!  I  can  read  your  thoughts  like  an  open 
book.  You  are  quoting  to  yourself,  no  doubt,  at 
this  very  moment,  some  of  the  pretty  speeches  of 
your  friend  Quincunx.  A  nice  fellow,  he  is,  for  a 
girl's  teacher!  A  fellow  with  no  idea  of  his  own  in 
his  head!  A  fellow  afraid  to  raise  his  eyes  above 
one's  boot-laces!  Why  the  other  day,  when  I  was 
out  shooting  and  met  him  in  the  lane,  he  turned 
straight  rovmd,  and  walked  back  on  his  tracks  — 
simply  from  fear  of  passing  me.  I  hate  these  sneak- 
ing cowards!  I  hate  their  cunning,  miserable,  little 
ways!  I  should  like  to  trample  them  all  out  of 
existence!  That  is  the  worst  of  being  strong  in  this 
world.  One  is  worried  to  death  by  a  lot  of  fools  who 
are  not  worth  the  effort  spent  on  them." 

Lacrima  uttered  no  word,  but  looked  sadly  away, 
over  the  fair  landscape.  In  her  heart,  in  spite  of  her 
detestation  of  the  man,  she  felt  a  strange  fantastic 
sympathy  with  a  good  deal  of  what  he  said.  Women, 
especially  women  of  Latin  races,  have  no  great  respect 
for  democratic  sentiments  when  they  do  not  issue  in 
definite  deeds.  Her  private  idea  of  a  revolutionary 
leader  was  something  very  far  removed  from  the  > 
voluble  local  candidate,  and  she  had  suffered  too 
much  herself  from  the  frail  petulance  of  Maurice 
Quincunx  not  to  feel  a  secret  longing  that  somewhere, 
somehow,  this  aggressive  tyrant  should  be  faced  by  a 
strength  as  firm,  as  capable,  as  fearless,  as  his  own. 


THE   ORCHARD  193 


Mr.  Roraer,  with  his  swarthy  imperial  face  and 
powerful  figure,  seemed  to  her,  as  he  leant  against 
the  tree,  so  to  impress  himself  upon  that  yielding 
landscape,  that  there  appeared  reason  enough  for  his 
complaint  that  he  could  find  no  antagonist  worthy 
of  his  steel.  In  the  true  manner  of  a  Pariah,  who 
turns,  with  swift  contempt,  upon  her  own  class,  the 
girl  was  conscious  of  a  rising  tide  of  revolt  in  her 
heart  against  the  incompetent  weakness  of  her  friend. 
What  would  she  not  give  to  be  able,  even  once,  to 
see  this  man  outfaced  and  outwitted!  She  was  im- 
pressed too,  poor  girl,  as  she  shrank  silently  aside 
from  his  sarcasm,  by  the  horrible  indifference  of  these 
charming  sunlit  fields  to  the  brutality  of  the  man's 
challenge.  They  cared  nothing  —  nothing!  It  was 
impossible  to  make  them  care.  Hundreds  of  years 
ago  they  had  slumbered,  just  as  dreamily,  just  as 
indifferently,  as  they  did  now.  If  even  at  this 
moment  she  were  to  plunge  a  knife  into  the  man's 
heart,  so  that  he  fell  a  mass  of  senseless  clay  at  her 
feet,  that  impervious  wood-pigeon  would  go  on  mur- 
muring its  monotonous  ditty,  just  as  peacefully,  just 
as  serenely!  There  was  something  really  terrifying 
to  her  in  this  callous  indifference  of  Nature.  It  was 
like  living  perpetually  in  close  contact  with  a  person 
who  was  deaf  and  dumb  and  blind;  and  who,  while 
the  most  tragic  events  were  being  transacted,  went 
on  cheerfully  and  imperturbably  humming  some  merry 
tune.  It  would  be  almost  better,  thought  the  girl, 
if  that  tree-trunk  against  which  the  quarry-owner 
pressed  his  heavy  hand  were  really  in  league  with 
him.  Anything  were  better  than  this  smiling  indif- 
ference which  seemed  to  keep  on  repeating  in  a  voice 


194  WOOD  AND   STONE 

as  monotonous  as  the  pigeon's  —  "Everything  is 
permitted.  Nothing  is  forbidden.  Nothing  is  for- 
bidden. Everything  is  permitted."  like  the  silly 
reiterated  whirring  of  some  monstrous  placid  shuttle. 
It  was  strange,  the  rebellious  inconsistent  thoughts, 
which  passed  through  her  mind!  She  wondered  why 
Hugh  Clavering  was  thus  to  be  waylaid  and  per- 
suaded. Had  he  dared  to  rise  in  genuine  opposition?! 
No,  she  did  not  believe  it.  He  had  probably  talked 
religion,  just  as  Maurice  talked  anarchy  and  Wonej 
talked  socialism.  It  was  all  talk!  Romer  was  quite 
right.  They  had  no  spirit  in  them,  these  English 
people.  She  thought  of  the  fierce  atheistic  rebels  of 
her  own  country.  They,  at  any  rate,  understood  that 
evil  had  to  be  resisted  by  action,  and  not  by  vaguej 
protestations  of  unctuous  sentiment! 

When  Mr.  Romer  left  them  and  returned  to  his] 
seat  on  the  terrace,  the  girls  did  not  at  once  proceed! 
on  their  way,  but  waited,  hesitating;  and  amused! 
themselves  by  pulling  down  the  lower  branches  of  a 
lime  and  trying  to  anticipate  the  sweetness  of  its  yet| 
unbudded  fragrance. 

"Let's    stroll    down    the   drive    first,"    said    Gladys j 
presently,  "till  we  are  out  of  sight,  and  then  we  cani 
cross  the  mill    mead   and  get   into   the  orchard   that 
way."     They    followed    this    design    with    elaborate! 
caution,    and    only    when    quite    concealed    from    the 
windows  of  the  house,  turned  quickly  northward  and 
left   the   park    for   the   orchards.     Between   the   wall, 
of  the  north  garden  and  the  railway,  lay  some  of  the 
oldest  and  least  frequented  of  these  shadowy  places, 
completely  out  of  the  ordinary  paths  of  traffic,  and 
only  accessible  by  field-ways.     Into  the  smallest  and 


THE   ORCHARD  195 

most  secluded  of  all  these  the  girls  wandered,  gliding 
noiselessly  between  the  thick  hedges  and  heavy  grass, 
like  two  frail  phantoms  of  the  upper  world  visiting 
some  Elysian  solitude. 

Gladys  laid  her  hand  on  her  companion's  arm. 
"We  had  better  wait  here,"  she  said,  "where  we  can 
see  the  whole  orchard.  They  ought  to  know,  by  now, 
where  to  come." 

They  seated  themselves  on  the  bowed  trunk  of  an 
ancient  apple-tree  that  by  long  decline  had  at  last 
reached  a  horizontal  position.  The  flowering  season 
was  practically  over,  though  here  and  there  a  late 
cider-tree,  growing  more  in  shadow  than  the  rest, 
still  carried  its  delicate  burden  of  clustered  blossoms. 

"How  many  times  is  it  that  we  have  met  them 
here?"  whispered  the  fair  girl,  snatching  off  her  hat 
and  tossing  it  on  the  grass.  "This  is  the  fifth  time, 
isn't  it?  What  dear  things  they  are!  I  think  its 
much  more  exciting,  this  sort  of  thing,  —  don't  you? 
—  than  dull  tennis  parties  with  silly  idiots  like  young 
Ilminster." 

The  Italian  nodded.  "It  is  a  good  thing  that 
James  and  I  get  on  so  well,"  she  said.  "It  would 
be  awkward  if  we  were  as  afraid  of  one  another  as 
when  we  first  met." 

Gladys  put  her  hand  caressingly  on  her  companion's 
knee  and  looked  into  her  face  with  a  slow  seductive 
smile. 

"You  are  forgetting  your  Mr.  Quincunx  a  little, 
just  a  little,  these  days,  aren't  you,  darling?  Don't 
be  shy,  now  —  or  look  cross.  You  know  you  are! 
You  can't  deny  it.  Your  boy  is  almost  as  nice  as 
mine.     He  doesn't  like  me,  though.     I  can  see  that! 


196  WOOD   AND   STONE 

But  I  like  him.  I  like  him  awfully!  You'd  better 
take  care,  child.     If  ever  I  get  tired  of  my  Luke  — " 

"James  isn't  a  boy,"  protested  Lacrima, 

"Silly!"  cried  Gladys.  "Of  course  he  is.  Who 
cares  about  age?  They  are  all  the  same.  I  always 
call  them  boys  when  they  attract  me.  I  like  the 
word.  I  like  to  say  it.  It  makes  me  feel  as  if  I 
were  one  of  those  girls  in  London.  You  know  what  I 
mean!" 

Lacrima  looked  at  her  gravely.  "I  always  feel  as 
if  James  Andersen  were  much  older  than  I,"  she  said. 

"But  your  Mr.  Quincunx,"  repeated  the  fair 
creature,  slipping  her  soft  fingers  into  her  friend's 
hand,  "your  Mr.  Quincunx  is  not  quite  what  he  was 
to  you,  before  we  began  these  adventures?" 

"I  wish  you  wouldn't  say  that,  Gladys!"  rejoined 
the  Italian,  freeing  her  hands  and  clasping  them 
passionately  together.  "It  is  wicked  of  you  to  say 
that!  You  know  I  only  talk  to  James  so  that  you 
can  do  what  you  like.  I  shall  always  be  Maurice's 
friend.     I  shall  be  his  friend  to  the  last!"   . 

Gladys  laughed  merrily.  "That  is  what  I  wanted," 
she  retorted.  "I  wanted  to  make  you  burst  out. 
When  people  burst  out,  they  are  always  doubtful  in 
their  hearts.  Ah,  little  puritan!  so  we  are  already  in 
the  position  of  having  two  sweethearts,  are  we?  —  and 
not  knowing  which  of  the  two  we  really  like  best? 
That  is  a  very  pretty  situation  to  be  in.  It  is  where 
we  all  are!     I  hope  you  enjoy  it!" 

Lacrima  let  her  hands  fall  helplessly  to  her  side, 
against  the  grey  bark  of  the  apple-tree.  "Why  do 
you  hate  Mr.  Quincunx  so?"  she  asked,  looking 
gravely  into  her  friend's  face. 


THE   ORCHARD  197 

"Why  do  I  hate  him?"  said  Gladys.  "Oh,  I  really 
don't  know!  I  didn't  know  I  did.  If  I  do,  it's 
because  he's  such  a  weak  wretched  creature.  He  has 
no  more  spirit  than  a  sick  dog.  He  talks  such  non- 
sense too!  I  am  glad  he  has  to  walk  to  Yeoborough 
every  day  and  do  a  little  work.  You  ought  to  be 
glad  too!  He  could  never  marry  if  he  didn't  make 
some  money." 

"He  doesn't  want  to  marry,"  murmured  Lacrima. 
"He  only  wants  to  be  left  alone." 

"A  nice  friend  he  seems  to  be,"  cried  the  other, 
"for  a  girl  like  you!  I  suppose  he  kisses  you  and  that 
sort  of  thing,  doesn't  he?  I  shouldn't  like  to  be 
kissed  by  a  silly  old  man  like  that,  with  a  great 
stupid  beard." 

"You  mustn't  say  these  things  to  me,  Gladys,  you 
mustn't!  I  won't  hear  them.  Mr.  Quincunx  isn't 
an  old  man!  He  is  younger  than  James  Andersen. 
He  is  not  forty  yet." 

"He  looks  fifty,  if  he  looks  a  day,"  said  Gladys, 
"and  the  colour  of  his  beard  is  disgusting!  It's  like 
dirty  water.  Fancy  having  a  horrid  thing  like  that 
pressed  against  your  face!  And  I  suppose  he  cries 
and  slobbers  over  you,  doesn't  he?  I  have  seen  him 
cry.  I  hate  a  man  who  cries.  He  cried  the  other 
night,  —  father  told  me  so  —  when  he  found  he  had 
spent  all  his  money." 

Lacrima  got  up  and  walked  a  few  paces  away. 
She  loathed  this  placid  golden-haired  creature,  at  that 
moment,  so  intensely,  that  it  was  all  she  could  do  to 
refrain  from  leaping  upon  her  and  burying  her  teeth 
in  her  soft  neck.  She  leant  against  one  of  the  trees 
and  pressed  her  head  upon  its  grey  lichen.     Gladys 


198  WOOD   AND   STONE 

slipped  down  into  a  more  luxurious  position.  She 
looked  complacently  around  her.  No  spot  could  have 
been  better  adapted  for  a  romantic  encounter. 

The  gnarled  and  time-worn  trunks  of  the  old  apple- 
trees,  each  looking  as  if  it  had  lingered  there,  full  of 
remote  memories,  from  an  age  coeval  with  the  age  of 
those  very  druids  whose  sacred  mistletoe  still  clung 
in  patches  to  their  boughs,  formed  a  strange  fantastic 
array  of  twisted  and  distorted  natural  pillars,  upon 
which  the  foliage,  meeting  everywhere  above  their 
heads,  leaned  in  shadowy  security,  like  the  roof  of  a 
heathen  temple.  The  buttercups  and  cuckoo-flowers, 
which,  here  and  there,  sprinkled  the  heavy  grass, 
were  different  from  those  in  the  open  meadows. 
The  golden  hue  of  the  one,  and  the  lavender  tint  of 
the  other,  took  on,  in  this  diurnal  gloom,  a  chilly  and 
tender  pallour,  both  colours  approximating  to  white. 
The  grey  lichen  hung  down  in  loose  festoons  from  the 
higher  portions  of  the  knotted  trunks,  and  crept, 
thick  and  close,  round  the  moss  at  their  roots.  There 
could  hardly  be  conceived  a  spot  more  suggestive  of 
absolute  and  eternal  security  than  this  Hesperidean 
enclosure. 

The  very  fact  of  the  remote  but  constant  presence 
of  humanity  there,  as  a  vague  dreamy  background  of 
immemorial  tending,  increased  this  sense.  One  felt 
that  the  easy  invasions  of  grafting-time  and  gathering- 
time,  returning  perennially  in  their  seasons,  only 
intensified  the  long  delicious  solitudes  of  the  intervals 
between,  when,  in  rich,  hushed  languor,  the  blossoms 
bud  and  bloom  and  fall;  and  the  fruit  ripens  and 
sweetens;  and  the  leaves  flutter  down.  That  ex- 
quisite  seductive  charm,  the  charm  of   places  full  of 


THE   ORCHARD  199 

quietness,  yet  bordering  on  the  edge  of  the  days' 
labour,  hung  like  a  heavy  atmosphere  of  contentment 
over  the  shadowy  aisles  of  this  temple  of  peace.  The 
wood-pigeons  keep  up  a  perpetual  murmur,  all  the 
summer  long,  in  these  untrodden  spots.  No  eyes  see 
them.  It  is  as  though  they  never  saw  one  another. 
But  their  drowsy  liturgical  repetitions  answer  and 
answer  again,  as  if  from  the  unfathomable  depths  of 
some  dim  green  underworld,  worshipping  the  gods  of 
silence  with  sounds  that  give  silence  itself  a  richer,  a 
fuller  weight. 

"There  they  are!"  cried  Gladys  suddenly,  as  the 
figures  of  the  Andersen  brothers  made  themselves 
visible  on  the  further  side  of  the  orchard. 

The  girls  advanced  to  meet  them  through  the  thick 
grass,  swinging  their  summer-hats  in  their  hands  and 
bending  their  heads,  now  and  then,  to  avoid  the 
over-hanging  boughs.  The  meeting  between  these 
four  persons  would  have  made  a  pleasant  and  appro- 
priate subject  for  one  of  those  richly-coloured  old- 
fashioned  prints  which  one  sometimes  observes  in 
early  Victorian  parlours.  Gladys  grew  quite  pale  with 
excitement,  and  her  voice  assumed  a  vibrant  tender- 
ness when  she  accosted  Luke,  which  made  Lacrima 
give  a  little  start  of  surprise,  as  she  shook  hands  with 
the  elder  brother.  Had  her  persecutor  then,  got, 
after  all,  some  living  tissue  in  the  place  where  the 
heart  beat? 

Luke's  manner  had  materially  altered  since  he  had 
submitted  so  urbanely  to  the  fair  girl's  insulting  airs 
at  the  close  of  their  first  encounter.  His  way  of 
treating  her  now  was  casual,  flippant,  abrupt  — 
almost  indifferent.     Instead  of  following  the  pathetic 


200  WOOD  AND   STONE 

pressure  of  her  arm  and  hand,  which  at  once  bade 
him  hasten  the  separation  of  the  group,  he  deliberately 
lingered,  chatting  amicably  with  Lacrima  and  asking 
her  questions  about  Italy.  It  seemed  that  the  plausi- 
ble Luke  knew  quite  as  much  about  Genoa  and 
Florence  and  Venice  as  his  more  taciturn  brother,  and 
all  he  knew  he  was  well  able  to  turn  into  effective 
use.  He  was  indeed  a  most  engaging  and  irresistible 
conversationalist;  and  Gladys  grew  paler  and  paler, 
as  she  watched  the  animation  of  his  face  and  listened 
to  his  pleasant  and  modulated  voice. 

It  caused  sheer  suffering  to  her  fiercely  impetuous 
nature,  this  long-drawn  out  delay.  Every  moment 
that  passed  diminished  the  time  they  would  have 
together.  Her  nerves  ached  for  the  touch  of  his 
arms  about  her,  and  a  savage  desire  to  press  her 
mouth  to  his,  and  satiate  herself  with  kisses,  throbbed 
in  her  every  vein.  Why  would  he  not  stop  this 
irrelevant  stream  of  talk?  What  did  she  care  about 
the  narrow  streets  of  Genoa,  —  or  the  encrusted 
fagade  of  San  Marco?  It  had  been  their  custom  to 
separate  immediately  on  meeting,  and  for  Luke  to 
carry  her  off  to  a  charming  hiding-place  they  had 
discovered.  With  the  fierce  pantherish  craving  of  a 
love-scorched  animal  her  soul  cried  out  to  be  clasped 
close  to  her  friend  in  this  secluded  spot,  having  her 
will  of  those  maddening  youthful  lips  with  their  proud 
Grecian  curve!     Still  he  must  go  on  talking! 

James  and  Lacrima,  lending  themselves,  naturally 
and  easily,  to  the  mood  of  the  moment,  were  already 
seated  at  the  foot  of  a  twisted  and  ancestral  apple- 
tree.  Soon  Luke,  still  absorbed  in  his  conversation 
with  the  Italian,  shook  off  Gladys'  arm  and  settled 


THE   ORCHARD  201 

himself  beside  them,  plucking  a  handful  of  grass,  as 
he  did  so,  and  inhaling  its  fragrance  with  sybarite 
pleasure. 

"St.  Mark's  is  the  only  church  in  the  world  for 
me,"  Luke  was  saying.  "I  have  pictures  of  it  from 
every  conceivable  angle.  It  is  quite  a  mania  with  me 
collecting  such  things.  I  have  dozens  of  them; 
haven't  I,  James?" 

"Do  you  mean  those  postcards  father  sent  home 
when  he  went  over  there  to  work?"  answered  the 
elder  brother,  one  of  whose  special  peculiarities  was 
a  curious  pleasure  in  emphasizing,  in  the  presence  of 
the  "upper  classes,"  the  humility  of  his  origin. 

Luke  laughed.  "Well  —  yes  —  those  —  and  others," 
he  said.  "  You  haven't  the  least  idea  what  I  keep 
in  my  drawer  of  secret  treasures;  you  know  you 
haven't!  I've  got  some  lovely  letters  there  among 
other  things.  Letters  that  I  wouldn't  let  anyone  see 
for  the  world!"  He  glanced  smilingly  at  Gladys,  who 
was  pacing  up  and  down  in  front  of  them,  like  a 
beautiful  tigress. 

"Look  here,  my  friends,"  she  said.  "The  time  is 
slipping  away  frightfully.  We  are  not  going  to  sit 
here  all  the  while,  are  we,  talking  nonsense,  like 
people  at  a  garden  party?" 

"It's  so  lovely  here,"  said  Luke  with  a  slow  smile. 
"I  really  don't  think  that  your  favourite  corner  is  so 
much  nicer.  I  am  in  no  hurry  to  move.  Are  you, 
MissTraffio?" 

Lacrima  saw  a  look  upon  her  cousin's  face  that 
boded  ill  for  their  future  relations  if  she  did  not 
make  some  kind  of  effort.     She  rose  to  her  feet. 

"Come,   Mr.  Andersen,"  she  said,  giving  James  a 


202  WOOD  AND   STONE 

wistful  look.  "Let  us  take  a  little  stroll,  and  then 
return  again  to  these  young  people." 

James  rose  obediently,  and  they  walked  oflp  to- 
gether. They  passed  from  the  orchards  belonging  to 
Mr.  Romer's  tenant,  and  entered  those  immediately 
at  the  foot  of  the  vicarage  garden.  Here,  through  a 
gap  in  the  hedge  they  were  attracted  by  the  sight  of 
a  queer  bed  of  weeds  growing  at  the  edge  of  a  potato- 
patch.  They  were  very  curious  weeds,  rather  re- 
sembling sea-plants  than  land-plants;  in  colour  of  a 
dull  glaucous  green,  and  in  shape  grotesquely  elon- 
gated. 

"What  are  those  things?"  said  Lacrima.  "I  think 
I  have  never  seen  such  evil-looking  plants.  Why  do 
they  let  them  grow  there?" 

James  surveyed  the  objects.  "They  certainly  have 
a  queer  look,"  he  said,  "but  you  know,  in  old  days, 
there  was  a  grave-yard  here,  of  a  peculiar  kind.  It 
is  only  in  the  last  fifty  years  that  they  have  dug  it 
up  and  included  it  in  this  garden." 

Lacrima  shuddered.  "I  would  not  eat  those  po- 
tatoes for  anything!  You  know  I  think  I  come  to 
dislike  more  and  more  the  look  of  your  English  vege- 
table gardens,  with  their  horrid,  heavy  leaves,  so 
damp  and  oozy  and  disgusting!" 

"I  agree  with  you  there,"  returned  the  wood- 
carver.  "I  have  always  hated  Nevilton,  and  every 
aspect  of  it;  but  I  think  I  hate  these  overgrown 
gardens  most  of  all." 

"They  look  as  if  they  were  fed  from  churchyards, 
don't  they?"  went  on  the  girl.  "Look  at  those 
heavy  laurel  bushes  over  there,  and  those  dreadful 
fir-trees!     I   should   cut  them  all   down   if   this  place 


THE  ORCHARD  WS 

belonged  to  me.  Oh,  how  I  long  for  olives  and  vine- 
yards! These  orchards  are  all  very  well,  but  they 
seem  to  me  as  if  they  were  made  to  keep  out  the  sun 
and  the  wholesome  air." 

James  Andersen  smiled  grimly.  "Orchards  and 
potato  gardens!"  he  muttered.  "Yes,  these  are  typi- 
cal of  this  country  of  clay.  And  these  vicarage  shrub- 
beries! I  think  a  shrubbery  is  the  last  limit  of 
depression  and  desolation.  I  am  sure  all  the  murders 
committed  in  this  country  are  planned  in  shrubberies, 
and  under  the  shade  of  damp  laurel-bushes." 

"In  our  country  we  grow  corn  between  the  fruit- 
trees,"  said  Lacrima. 

"Yes,  corn — "  returned  Andersen,  "corn  and  wine 
and  oil!  Those  are  the  natural,  the  beautiful, 
products  of  the  earth.  Things  that  are  fed  upon  sun 
and  air  —  not  upon  the  bones  of  the  dead!  All  these 
Nevilton  places,  however  luxuriant,  seem  to  me  to 
smell  of  death." 

"But  was  this  corner  really  a  churchyard?"  asked 
the  Italian.  "I  hope  Mrs.  Seldom  won't  stroll  down 
this  way  and  see  us!" 

"Mrs.  Seldom  is  well  suited  to  the  place  she  lives 
in,"  returned  the  other.  "She  lives  upon  the  Past, 
just  as  her  garden  does  —  just  as  her  potatoes  do! 
These  English  vicarages  are  dreadful  places.  They 
have  all  the  melancholy  of  age  without  its  historic 
glamour.  And  how  morbid  they  are!  Any  of  your 
cheerful  Latin  cures  would  die  in  them,  simply  of 
damp  and  despair." 

"But  do  tell  me  about  this  spot,"  repeated  La- 
crima, with  a  little  shiver.  "Why  did  you  say  it 
was  a  peculiar  churchyard?" 


204  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"It  was  the  place  where  they  buried  unbaptized 
children,"  answered  Andersen,  and  added,  in  a  lower 
tone,  "how  cold  it  is  getting!  It  must  be  the  shadow 
we  are  in." 

"But  you  haven't  yet,"  murmured  Lacrima,  "you 
haven't  yet  told  me,  what  those  weeds  are." 

"Well  —  we  call  them  'mares'-tails'  about  here," 
answered  the  stone-carver,  "I  don't  know  their 
proper  name." 

"But  why  don't  they  dig  them  up?  Look!  They 
are  growing  all  among  the  potatoes." 

"They  can't  dig  them  up,"  returned  the  man. 
"They  can't  get  at  their  roots.  They  are  the  worst 
and  most  obstinate  weed  there  is.  They  grow  in  all 
the  Nevilton  gardens.  They  are  the  typical  Nevilton 
flora.  They  must  have  grown  here  in  the  days  of 
the  druids." 

"But  how  absurd!"  cried  Lacrima.  "I  feel  as  if 
I  could  pull  them  up  with  my  hands.  The  earth 
looks  so  soft." 

"The  earth  is  soft  enough,"  replied  Andersen,  "but 
the  roots  of  these  weeds  adhere  fast  to  the  rock 
underneath.  The  rock,  you  know,  the  sandstone 
rock,  lies  only  a  short  distance  beneath  our  feet." 

"The  same  stone  as  Nevilton  house  is  built  of.'*" 

"Certainly  the  same.  Our  stone,  Mr.  Romer's 
stone,  the  stone  upon  which  we  all  live  here  —  except 
those  who  till  the  fields." 

"I  hate  the  thing!"  cried  Lacrima,  in  curious 
agitation. 

"You  do?  Well  —  to  tell  you  the  honest  truth, 
so  do  I.     I  associate  it  with  my  father." 

"I  associate  it  with  Gladys,"  whispered  Lacrima. 


I 


THE   ORCHARD  205 

"I  can  believe  it.  We  both  associate  it  with 
houses  of  tyranny,  of  wretched  persecution.  Perhaps 
I  have  never  told  you  that  my  father  was  directly 
the  cause  of  my  mother's  death?" 

"You  have  hinted  it,"  murmured  the  girl.  "I 
suspected  it.  But  Luke  loves  the  stone,  doesn't  he? 
He  always  speaks  as  if  the  mere  handling  of  it,  in  his 
workshop,  gave  him  exquisite  pleasure." 

"A  great  many  things  give  Luke  exquisite  pleasure," 
returned  the  other  grimly.  "Luke  lives  for  exquisite 
pleasure." 

A  quick  step  on  the  grass  behind  them  made  them 
swing  suddenly  round.  It  was  Vennie  Seldom,  who, 
unobserved,  had  been  watching  them  from  the 
vicarage  terrace.  A  few  paces  behind  her  came  Mr. 
Taxater,  walking  cautiously  and  deliberately,  with 
the  air  of  a  Lord  Chesterfield  returning  from  an 
audience  at  St.  James'.  Mr.  Taxater  had  already 
met  the  Italian  on  one  or  two  occasions.  He  had 
sat  next  to  her  once,  when  dining  at  Nevilton  House, 
and  he  was  considerably  interested  in  her. 

"What  a  lovely  evening,  Miss  Trafiio,"  said  Vennie 
shyly,  but  without  embarrassment.  Vennie  was 
always  shy,  but  nothing  ever  interfered  with  her 
self-possession. 

"I  am  glad  you  are  showing  Mr.  Andersen  these 
orchards  of  ours.  I  always  think  they  are  the  most 
secluded  place  in  the  whole  village." 

"Ha!"  said  Mr.  Taxater,  when  he  had  greeted 
them  with  elaborate  and  friendly  courtesy,  "I  thought 
you  two  were  bound  to  make  friends  sooner  or  later! 
I  call  you  my  two  companions  in  exile,  among  our 
dear   Anglo-Saxons.     Miss   Traffio   I    know   is   Latin, 


200  WOOD  AND   STONE 


and  you,  sir,  must  have  some  kind  of  foreign  blood. 
I  am  right,  am  I  not,  Mr.  Andersen?" 

James  looked  at  him  humorously,  though  a  little 
grimly.  He  was  always  pleased  to  be  addressed  by 
Mr.  Taxater,  as  indeed  was  everybody  who  knew  him. 
The  great  scholar's  detached  intellectualism  gave  him 
an  air  of  complete  aloofness  from  all  social  distinctions. 

"Perhaps  I  may  have,"  he  answered.  "My 
mother  used  to  hint  at  something  of  the  kind.  She 
was  always  very  fond  of  foreign  books.  I  rather 
fancy  that  I  once  heard  her  say  something  about  a 
strain  of  Spanish  blood." 

"I  thought  so!  I  thought  so!"  cried  Mr.  Taxater, 
pulling  his  hat  over  his  eyes  and  protruding  his 
chin  and  under-lip,  in  the  manner  peculiar  to  him 
when  especially  pleased. 

"I  thought  there  was  something  Spanish  in  you. 
How  extraordinarily  interesting!  Spain, —  there  is  no 
country  like  it  in  the  world!  You  must  go  to  Spain, 
Mr.  Andersen.  You  would  go  there  in  a  different  spirit 
from  these  wretched  sight-seers  who  carry  their  own 
vulgarity  with  them.  You  would  go  with  that  feeling 
of  reverence  for  the  great  things  of  civilization,  which 
is  inseparable  from  the  least  drop  of  Latin  blood." 

"Would  you  like  to  see  Spain,  Miss  Traffio?  en- 
quired Vennie.  "Mr.  Taxater,  I  notice,  always  leaves 
out  us  women,  when  he  makes  his  attractive  pro- 
posals. I  think  he  thinks  that  we  have  no  capacity 
for  understanding  this  civilization  he  talks  of." 

"I  think  you  understand  everything,  better  than 
any  man  could,"  murmured  Lacrima,  conscious  of  an 
extraordinary  depth  of  sympathy  emanating  from 
this  frail  figure. 


THE   ORCHARD  207 

"Miss  Seldom  has  been  trying  to  make  me  appre- 
ciate the  beauty  of  these  orchards,"  went  on  Mr. 
Taxater,  addressing  James.  "But  I  am  afraid  I  am 
not  very  easily  converted.  I  have  a  prejudice  against 
orchards.  For  some  reason  or  other,  I  associate 
them  with  dragons  and  serpents." 

"Miss  Seldom  has  every  reason  to  love  the  beautiful 
aspects  of  our  Nevilton  scenery,"  said  the  stone- 
carver.  "Her  ancestors  possessed  all  these  fields  and 
orchards  so  long,  that  it  would  be  strange  if  their 
descendant  did  not  have  an  instinctive  passion  for 
them."  He  uttered  these  words  with  that  curious 
undertone  of  bitterness  which  marked  all  his  refer- 
ences to  aristocratic  pretension. 

Little  Vennie  brushed  the  sarcasm  gently  aside,  as 
if  it  had  been  a  fluttering  moth. 

"Yes,  I  do  love  them  in  a  sense,"  she  said,  "but 
you  must  remember  that  I,  too,  was  educated  in  a 
Latin  country.  So,  you  see,  we  four  are  all  outsiders 
and  heretics!  I  fancy  your  brother,  Mr.  Andersen,  is 
an  ingrained  Neviltonian." 

James  smiled  in  a  kindly,  almost  paternal  manner, 
at  the  little  descendant  of  the  Tudor  courtiers.  Her 
sweetness  and  artless  goodness  made  him  feel  ashamed 
of  his  furtive  truculence. 

"I  wish  you  would  come  in  and  see  my  mother  and 
me,  one  of  these  evenings,"  said  Vennie,  looking 
rather  wistfully  at  Lacrima  and  putting  a  more  tender 
solicitation  into  her  tone  than  the  mere  words  implied. 
•  Lacrima  hesitated.  "I  am  afraid  I  cannot  promise," 
she  said  nervously.  "My  cousin  generally  wants  me 
in  the  evening." 

"Perhaps,"    put    in    Mr.    Taxater,    with    his    most 


208  WOOD   AND   STONE 

Talleyrand-like  air,  "a  similar  occasion  to  the  present 
one  may  arise  again,  when  with  Mr.  Andersen's  permis- 
sion,  we   may   all    adjourn    to   the   vicarage    garden." 

Lacrima,  rather  uncomfortably,  looked  down  at  the 
grass. 

"We  four,  being,  as  we  have  admitted,  all  outsiders 
here,"  w-ent  on  the  diplomatist,  "ought  to  have  no 
secrets  from  one  another.  I  think"  —  he  looked  at 
Vennie  —  "we  may  just  as  well  confess  to  our  friends 
that  we  quite  realize  the  little  —  charming  —  '  friend- 
ship,' shall  I  say?  —  that  has  sprung  up  between  this 
gentleman's  brother  and  Miss  Romer." 

"I  think,"  said  James  Andersen  hurriedly,  in  order 
to  relieve  Lacrima's  embarrassment,  "I  think  the 
real  bond  between  Luke  and  Miss  Gladys  is  their 
mutual  pleasure  in  all  this  luxuriant  scenery.  Some- 
how I  feel  as  if  you.  Sir,  and  Miss  Seldom,  were  quite] 
separate  from  it  and  outside  it." 

"Yes,"  cried  Vennie  eagerly,  "and  Lacrima  is  I 
outside  it,  because  she  is  half -Italian,  and  you  are] 
outside  it  because  you  are  half-Spanish." 

"It  is  clear,  then,"  said  Mr.  Taxater,  "that  we 
four  must  form  a  sort  of  secret  alliance,  an  alliance 
based  upon  the  fact  that  even  Miss  Seldom's  lovely 
orchards  do  not  altogether  make  us  forget  what 
civilization  means!" 

Neither  of  the  two  girls  seemed  quite  to  understand 
what  the  theologian  implied,  but  Andersen  shot  at 
him  a  gleam  of  appreciative  gratitude. 

"I  was  telling  Miss  Traffic, "  he  said,  "that  under 
this  grass,  not  very  many  feet  down,  a  remarkable 
layer  of  sandstone  obtrudes  itself." 

"An     orchard     based     on     rock,"     murmured     Mr. 


THE   ORCHARD  209 

Taxater,  "that,  I  think,  is  an  admirable  symbol  of 
what  this  place  represents.  Clay  at  the  top  and 
sandstone  at  the  bottom!  I  wonder  whether  it  is 
better,  in  this  world,  to  be  clay  or  stone?  We  four 
poor  foreigners  have,  I  suspect,  a  preference  for  a 
material  very  different  from  both  of  these.  Our 
element  would  be  marble.  Eh,  Andersen?  Marble 
that  can  resist  all  these  corrupting  natural  forces  and 
throw  them  back,  and  hold  them  down.  I  always 
think  that  marble  is  the  appropriate  medium  of 
civilization's  retort  to  instinct  and  savagery.  The 
Latin  races  have  always  built  in  marble.  It  was 
certainly  of  marble  that  our  Lord  was  thinking  when 
he  used  his  celebrated  metaphor  about  the  founding 
of  the  Church." 

The  stone-carver  made  no  answer.  He  had  noticed 
a  quick  supplicating  glance  from  Lacrima's  dark  eyes. 

"Well," — he   said,  "I  think   I   must  be  looking  for 
my  brother,  and  I  expect  our  young  lady  is  waiting 
for  Miss  Traffio." 
.   They  bade  their  friends  good-night  and  moved  off. 

"I  am  always  at  your  service,"  were  Mr.  Taxater's 
last  words,  "if  ever  either  of  you  care  to  appeal  to 
the  free-masonry  of  the  children  of  marble  against 
the  children  of  clay." 

As  they  retraced  their  steps  Andersen  remarked  to 
his  companion  how  curious  it  was,  that  neither  Vennie 
nor  Mr.  Taxater  seemed  in  the  least  aware  of  any- 
thing extraordinary  or  unconventional  in  this  surrep- 
titious friendship  between  the  girls  from  the  House 
and  their  father's  workmen. 

"Yes,  I  wonder  what  Mrs.  Seldom  would  think  of 
us,"    rejoined    Lacrima,    "but    she    probably    thinks 


210  AYOOD  AND   STONE 

Gladys  is  capable  of  anything  and  that  I  am  as  bad 
as  she  is.  But  I  do  like  that  little  Vennie!  I  believe 
she  is  a  real  saint.  She  gives  me  such  a  queer  feel- 
ing of  being  different  from  everyone." 

"Mr.  Taxater  no  doubt  is  making  a  convert  of 
her,"  said  the  stone-carver.  "And  I  have  a  suspicion 
that  he  hopes  to  convert  Gladys  too,  probably  through 
your  influence." 

"I  don't  like  to  think  that  of  him,"  replied  the 
girl.  "He  seems  to  me  to  admire  Vennie  for  herself 
and  to  be  kind  to  us  for  ourselves.  I  think  he  is  a 
thoroughh'  good  man." 

"Possibly  —  possibly,"  muttered  James,  "but  I 
don't  trust  him.     I  never  have  trusted  him." 

They  said  no  more,  and  threaded  their  way  slowly 
through  the  orchard  to  the  place  where  they  had 
left  the  others.  The  wind  had  dropped  and  there  was 
a  dull,  obstinate  expectancy  in  the  atmosphere. 
Every  leaf  and  grass  blade  seemed  to  be  intently 
alert  and  listening. 

In  her  heart  Lacrima  was  conscious  of  an  unusual 
sense  of  foreboding  and  apprehension.  Surely  there 
could  be  nothing  worse  in  store  for  her  than  what 
she  already  suffered.  She  wondered  what  Maurice 
Quincunx  was  doing  at  that  moment.  Was  he  think- 
ing of  her,  and  were  his  thoughts  the  cause  of  this 
strange  oppression  in  the  air?  Poor  Maurice!  She 
longed  to  be  free  to  devote  herself  to  him,  to  smooth 
his  path,  to  distract  his  mind.  Would  fate  ever 
make  such  a  thing  possible?  How  unfair  Gladys  was 
in  her  suspicions! 

She  liked  James  Andersen  and  was  very  grateful  to    I 
him,  but  he  did  not  need  her  as  Maurice  needed  her! 


THE  ORCHARD  211 

"I  see  them!"  she  cried  suddenly.  "But  how  odd 
they  look!  They're  not  speaking  a  word.  Have 
they  quarrelled,  I  wonder?" 

The  two  fair-haired  amorists  appeared  indeed 
extremely  gloomy  and  melancholy,  as  they  sat,  with 
a  little  space  between  them,  on  the  fallen  tree.  They 
rose  with  an  air  of  relief  at  the  others'  approach. 

"I  thought  you  were  never  coming,"  said  Gladys. 
"How  long  you  have  been!  We  have  been  waiting 
for  hours.  Come  along.  We  must  go  straight  back 
and  dress  or  we  shall  be  late  for  dinner.  No  time 
for  good-byes!  Au  revoir,  you  two!  Come  along, 
girl,  quick!     We'd  better  run." 

She  seized  her  cousin's  hand  and  dragged  her  off 
and  they  were  quickly  out  of  sight. 

The  two  brothers  watched  them  disappear  and 
then  turned  and  walked  away  together.  "Don't 
let's  go  home  yet,"  said  Luke.  "Let's  go  to  the 
churchyard  first.  The  sun  will  have  set,  but  it  won't 
be  dark  for  a  long  time.  And  I  love  the  churchyard 
in  the  twilight." 

James  nodded.  "It  is  our  garden,  isn't  it,  —  and 
our  orchard?  It  is  the  only  spot  in  Nevilton  where 
no  one  can  interfere  with  us." 

"That,  and  the  Seldom  Arms,"  added  the  younger 
brother. 

They  paced  side  by  side,  in  silence  till  they  reached 
the  road.  The  orchards,  left  to  themselves,  relapsed 
into  their  accustomed  reserve.  Whatever  secrets 
they  concealed  of  the  confused  struggles  of  ephemeral 
mortals,  they  concealed  in  inviolable  discretion. 


CHAPTER   XI 
ART  AND   NATURE 

THE  early  days  of  June,  all  of  them  of  the  same 
quality  of  golden  weather,  were  hardly  over, 
before  our  wanderer  from  Ohio  found  himself 
on  terms  of  quite  pleasant  familiarity  with  the 
celibate  vicar  of  Nevilton,  whose  relations  with  his 
friend  Gladys  so  immensely  interested  him. 

The  conscientious  vicar  had  sought  him  out,  on 
the  very  day  after  his  visit  to  the  mill  copse  and 
the  artist  had  found  the  priest  more  to  his  fancy 
than  he  had  imagined  possible. 

The  American's  painting  had  begun  in  serious 
earnest.  A  studio  had  been  constructed  for  him  in 
one  of  the  sheds  near  the  conservatory,  a  place  much 
more  full  of  light  and  air  and  pleasant  garden  smells, 
than  would  have  been  the  lumber-room  referred  to  by 
Mrs.  Romer,  adjoining  the  chaste  slumbers  of  the 
laborious  Lily.  Here  for  several  long  mornings  he 
had  worked  at  high  pressure  and  in  a  vein  of  imagina- 
tive expansion. 

Something  of  the  seething  sap  of  these  incomparable 
days  seemed  to  pass  into  his  blood.  He  plunged  into 
a  bold  and  original  series  of  Dionysic  "impressions," 
seeking  to  represent,  in  accordance  with  his  new  vision, 
those  legendary  episodes  in  the  life  of  the  divine 
Wanderer    which    seemed    most    capable    of    lending 


ART  AND   NATURE  213 

themselves  to  a  half-realistic,  half-fantastic  trans- 
mutation, of  the  people  and  places  immediately 
around  him.  He  sought  to  introduce  into  these 
pictures  the  very  impetus  and  pressure  of  the  exuber- 
ant earth-force,  as  he  felt  it  stirring  and  fermenting 
in  his  own  veins,  and  in  those  of  the  persons  and 
animals  about  him.  He  strove  to  clothe  the  shadowy 
poetic  outline  of  the  classical  story  with  fragments 
and  morsels  of  actual  experience  as  one  by  one  his 
imaginative  intellect  absorbed  them. 

Here,  too,  under  the  sycamores  and  elms  of  Ne- 
vilton,  the  old  world-madness  followed  the  alternations 
of  sun  and  moon,  with  the  same  tragic  swiftness  and 
the  same  ambiguous  beauty,  as  when,  with  tossing 
arms  and  bared  throats,  the  virgins  of  Thessaly  flung 
themselves  into  the  dew-starred  thickets. 

Dangelis  began  by  making  cautious  and  tentative 
use  of  such  village  children  as  he  found  it  possible 
to  lay  hands  upon,  as  models  in  his  work,  but  this 
method  did  not  prove  very  satisfactory. 

The  children,  when  their  alarm  and  inqusitiveness 
wore  off,  grew  tired  and  turbulent;  and  on  more  than 
one  occasion  the  artist  had  to  submit  to  astonish- 
ing visits  from  confused  and  angry  parents  who 
called  him  a  "foreigner"  and  a  "Yankee,"  and 
qualified  these  appelations  with  epithets  so  astound- 
ingly  gross,  that  Dangelis  was  driven  to  wonder 
from  what  simple  city-bred  fancy  the  illusion  of  rural 
innocence  had  first  proceeded. 

At  length,  as  the  days  went  on,  the  bold  idea 
came  into  his  head  of  persuading  Gladys  herself  to 
act  as  his  model. 

His  relations  with  her  had  firmly  established  them- 


214  WOOD  AND   STONE 

selves  now  on  the  secure  ground  of  playful  camara- 
derie, and  he  knew  enough  of  her  to  feel  tolerably 
certain  that  he  had  only  to  broach  such  a  scheme, 
to  have  it  welcomed  with  enthusiastic  ardour. 

He  made  the  suggestion  one  evening  as  they  walked 
home  together  after  her  sj)iritual  lesson.  "I  find 
that  last  picture  of  mine  extremely  difficult  to  man- 
age," he  said. 

"Why!  I  think  its  the  best  of  them  all!"  cried 
Gladys.  "You've  got  a  lovely  look  of  longing  in  the 
eyes  of  your  queer  god;  and  the  sail  of  Theseus'  ship, 
as  you  see  it  against  the  blue  sea,  is  wonderful.  The 
little  bushes  and  things,  too,  you've  put  in;  I  like 
them  particularly.  They  remind  me  of  that  wood 
down  by  the  mill,  where  I  caught  the  thrush.  I 
suppose  you've  forgotten  all  about  that  day,"  she 
added,  giving  him  a  quick  sidelong  glance. 

The  artist  seized  his  opportunity.  "They  would 
remind  you  still  more  of  our  wood,"  he  said  eagerly, 
"if  you  let  me  put  you  in  as  Ariadne!  Do,  Gladys," 
—  he  had  called  her  Gladys  for  some  days  —  "you 
will  make  a  simply  adorable  Ariadne.  As  she  is 
now,  she  is  wooden,  grotesque,  archaic  —  nothing 
but  drapery  and  white  ankles!" 

The  girl  had  flushed  with  pleasure  as  soon  as  she 
caught  the  drift  of  his  request.  Now  she  glanced 
mischievously  and   mockingly   at  him. 

"M?/  ankles,"  she  murmured  laughing,  "are  not 
so  very,  very  beautiful!" 

"Please  be  serious,  Gladys,"  he  said,  "I  am  really 
quite  in  earnest.  It  will  just  make  the  difference 
between  a  masterpiece  and  a  fiasco." 

"You   are   very  conceited,"  she   retorted   teasingly, 


ART  AND   NATURE  215 

"but  I  suppose  I  oughtn't  to  say  that,  ought  I,  as 
my  precious  ankles  are  to  be  a  part  of  this  master- 
piece r 

She  ran  in  front  of  him  down  the  drive,  and,  as 
if  to  give  him  an  exhibition  of  her  goddess-Hke  agility, 
caught  at  an  over-hanging  bough  and  swung  herself 
backwards  and  forwards. 

"What  fun!"  she  cried,  as  he  approached.  "Of 
course  I'll  do  it,  Mr.  Dangelis."  Then,  with  a  sudden 
change  of  tone  and  a  very  malign  expression,  as  she 
let  the  branch  swing  back  and  resumed  her  place  at 
his  side,  "Mr.  Clavering  must  see  me  posing  for  you. 
He  must  say  whether  he  thinks  I'm  good  enough 
for  Ariadne." 

The  artist  looked  a  shade  disconcerted  by  this 
unexpected  turn  to  the  project,  but  he  was  too  anxious 
to  make  sure  of  his  model  to  raise  any  premature 
objections.  "But  you  must  please  understand,"  was 
all  he  said,  "that  I  am  very  much  in  earnest  about 
this  picture.  If  anybody  but  myself  does  see  you, 
there  must  be  no  teasing  and  fooling." 

"Oh,  I  long  for  him  to  see  me!"  cried  the  girl. 
"I  can  just  imagine  his  face,  I  can  just  imagine  it!" 

The  artist  frowned.  "This  is  not  a  joke,  Gladys. 
Mind  you,  if  I  do  let  Clavering  into  our  secret,  it'll 
be  only  on  condition  that  you  promise  not  to  flirt 
with  him.  I  shall  want  you  to  stay  very  still,  —  just 
as  I  put  you." 

Dangelis  had  never  indicated  before  quite  so  plainly 
his  blunt  and  unvarnished  view  of  her  relations  with 
her  spiritual  adviser,  and  he  now  looked  rather  nerv- 
ously at  her  to  see  how  she  received  this  intimation. 

"I  love  teasing  Mr.  Clavering!"  she  cried  savagely, 


216  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"I  should  like  to  tease  him  so  much,  that  he  never, 
never,  would  forget  it!" 

This  extreme  expression  of  feeling  was  a  surprise, 
and  by  no  means  a  pleasant  one,  to  Ralph  Dangelis. 

"Why  do  you  want  so  much  to  upset  our  friend?" 
he  enquired. 

"I  suppose,"  she  answered,  still  instinctively  play- 
ing up  to  his  idea  of  her  naivete  and  childishness, 
"it  is  because  he  thinks  himself  so  good  and  so  per- 
fectly safe  from  falling  in  love  with  anyone  —  and 
that  annoys  me." 

"Ha!"  chuckled  Dangelis,  "so  that's  it,  is  it.?" 
and  he  paced  in  thoughtful  silence  by  her  side  until 
they  reached  the  house. 

The  morning  that  followed  this  conversation  was 
as  warm  as  the  preceding  ones,  but  a  strong  southern 
wind  had  risen,  with  a  remote  touch  of  the  sea  in  its 
gusty  violence.  The  trees  in  the  park,  as  the  artist 
and  his  girl-friend  watched  them  from  the  terrace, 
while  Mr.  Romer,  who  had  now  returned  from  town 
worked  in  his  study,  and  Lacrima  helped  Mrs.  Romer 
to  "do  the  flowers,"  swayed  and  rustled  ominously  in 
the  eddying  gusts. 

Clouds  of  dust  kept  blowing  across  the  gates  from 
the  surface  of  the  drive  and  the  delphiniums  bent 
low  on  their  long  stalks.  The  wind  was  of  that  pecu- 
liar character  which,  though  hot  and  full  of  balmy 
scents,  conveys  a  feeling  of  uneasiness  and  troubled 
expectation.  It  suggested  thunder  and  with  and  be- 
yond that,  something  threatening,  calamitous  and 
fatal. 

Gladys  was  pre-occupied  and  gloomy  that  morn- 
ing.    She  was  growing  a  little,  just  a  little,  tired  of 


ART  AND   NATURE  217 


the  American's  conversation.  Even  the  excitement 
of  arranging  about  the  purchase  in  Yeoborough  of 
suitable  materials  for  her  Ariadne  costume  did  not 
serve  to  lift  the  shadow  from  her  brow. 

She  was  getting  tired  of  her  role  as  the  naive,  im- 
petuous and  childish  innocent;  and  though  mentally 
still  quite  resolved  upon  following  her  mother's  fre- 
quent and  unblushing  hints,  and  doing  her  best  to 
"catch"  this  aesthetic  master  of  a  million  dollars,  the 
burden  of  the  task  was  proving  considerably  irksome. 

Ralph's  growing  tendency  to  take  her  into  his 
confidence  in  the  matter  of  the  philosophy  of  his 
art,  she  found  peculiarly  annoying. 

Philosophy  of  any  kind  was  detestable  to  Gladys, 
and  this  particular  sort  of  philosophy  especially  de- 
pressed her,  by  reducing  the  attraction  of  physical 
beauty  to  a  kind  of  dispassionate  analysis,  against 
the  chilling  virtue  of  which  all  her  amorous  wiles 
hopelessly  collapsed.  It  was  becoming  increasingly 
difficult,  too,  to  secure  her  furtive  interviews  with 
Luke  —  interviews  in  which  her  cynical  sensuality, 
suppressed  in  the  society  of  the  American,  was  allowed 
full  swing. 

Her  thoughts,  at  this  very  moment,  turned  passion- 
ately and  vehemently  towards  the  young  stone-carver, 
who  had  achieved,  at  last,  the  enviable  triumph  of 
seriously  ruflaing  and  disturbing  her  egoistic  self- 
reliance. 

Unused  to  suffering  the  least  thwarting  in  what  she 
desired,  it  fretted  and  chafed  her  intolerably  to  be 
forced  to  go  on  playing  her  coquettish  part  with  this 
good-natured  but  inaccessible  admirer,  while  all  the 
time  her  soul  yearned  so  desperately  for  the  shame- 


218  WOOD  AND   STONE 

less  kisses  that  made  her  forget  everything  in  the 
world  but  the  ecstacy  of  passion. 

It  was  all  very  well  to  plan  this  posing  as  Ariadne 
and  to  listen  to  Dangelis  discoursing  on  the  beauty 
of  pagan  myths.  The  artist  might  talk  endlessly 
about  dryads  and  fauns.  The  faun  she  longed 
to  be  pursued  by,  this  wind-swept  morning,  was  now 
engaged  in  hammering  Leonian  stone,  in  her  father's 
dusty  work-shops. 

She  knew,  she  told  herself,  far  better  than  the 
cleverest  citizen  of  Ohio,  what  a  real  Greek  god  was 
like,  both  in  his  kindness  and  his  unkindness;  and  her 
nerves  quivered  with  irritation,  as  the  hot  southern 
wind  blew  upon  her,  to  think  that  she  would  only 
be  able,  and  even  then  for  a  miserably  few  minutes, 
to  steal  off  to  her  true  Dionysus,  after  submitting 
for  a  whole  long  day  to  this  aesthetic  foolery. 

"It  must  have  been  a  wind  like  this,"  remarked 
Dangelis,  quite  unobservant  of  his  companion's  mo- 
roseness,  "which  rocked  the  doomed  palace  of  the  blas- 
pheming Pentheus  and  drove  him  forth  to  his  fate." 
He  paused  a  moment,  pondering,  and  then  added,  "I 
shall  paint  a  picture  of  this,  Gladys.  I  shall  bring 
in  Tiresias  and  the  other  old  men,  feeling  the  madness 
coming  upon  them." 

"I  know  all  about  that,"  the  girl  felt  compelled  to 
answer. 

"They  danced,  didn't  they?  They  couldn't  help 
dancing,  though  they  were  so  old  and  weak?" 

Dangelis  hardly  required  this  encouragement,  to 
launch  into  a  long  discourse  upon  the  subject  of 
Dionysian  madness,  its  true  symbolic  meaning,  its 
religious   significance,   its  survival  in   modern  times. 


ART  AND  NATURE  219 

He  quite  forgot,  as  he  gave  himself  up  to  this 
interesting  topic,  his  recent  resolution  to  exclude  dras- 
tically from  his  work  all  these  more  definitely  intel- 
lectualized  symbols. 

His  companion's  answers  to  this  harangue  became, 
by  degrees,  so  obviously  forced  and  perfunctory,  that 
even  the  good-tempered  Westerner  found  himself  a 
little  relieved  when  the  appearance  of  Lacrima  upon 
the  scene  gave  him  a  different  audience. 

When  Lacrima  appeared,  Gladys  slipped  away  and 
Dangelis  was  left  to  do  what  he  could  to  overcome  the 
Italian's  habitual  shyness. 

"One  of  these  days,"  he  said,  looking  with  a  kindly 
smile  into  the  girl's  frightened  eyes,  "I'm  going  to 
ask  you.  Miss  Traffio,  to  take  me  to  see  your  friend 
Mr.  Quincunx." 

Lacrima  started  violently.  This  was  the  last  name 
she  expected  to  hear  mentioned  on  the  Nevilton 
terrace. 

"I  —  I  — "  she  stammered,  "I  should  be  very 
glad  to  take  you.  I  didn't  know  they  had  told  you 
about  him." 

"Oh,  they  only  told  me  —  you  can  guess  the  kind  of 
thing!  —  that  he's  a  queer  fellow  who  lives  by  him- 
self in  a  cottage  in  Dead  Man's  Lane,  and  does 
nothing  but  dig  in  his  garden  and  talk  to  old  women 
over  the  wall.  He's  evidently  one  of  these  odd  out- 
of-the-way  characters,  that  your  English  —  Oh,  I  beg 
your  pardon!  — your  European  villages  produce.  Mr. 
Clavering  told  me  he  is  the  only  man  in  the  place 
he  never  goes  to  see.  Apparently  he  once  insulted 
the  good  vicar." 

"He  didn't  insult  him!"  cried  Lacrima  with  flashing 


220  WOOD  AND   STONE 

eyes.  "He  only  asked  him  not  to  walk  on  his  po- 
tatoes.    Mr.  Clavering  is  too  touchy." 

"Well  —  anyway,  do  take  me,  sometime,  to  see 
this  interesting  person.  Why  shouldn't  we  go  this 
afternoon?  This  wind  seems  to  have  driven  all  the 
ideas  out  of  my  head,  as  well  as  made  your  cousin 
extremely  bad- tempered!  So  do  take  me  to  see  your 
friend.  Miss  Traffic !  We  might  go  now  —  this 
moment  —  why  not?" 

Lacrima  shook  her  head,  but  she  looked  grateful 
and  not  displeased.  As  a  matter  of  fact  she  was 
particularly  anxious  to  introduce  the  American  to 
Mr.  Quincunx.  In  that  vague  subtle  way  which  is 
a  peculiarity,  not  only  of  the  Pariah-type,  but  of 
human  nature  in  general,  she  was  anxious  that 
Dangelis  should  be  given  at  least  a  passing  glimpse 
of  another  view  of  the  Romer  family  from  that  which 
he  seemed  to  have  imbibed. 

It  was  not  that  she  was  definitely  plotting  against 
her  cousin  or  trying  to  undermine  her  position  with 
her  artist-friend,  but  she  felt  a  natural  human  desire 
that  this  sympathetic  and  good-tempered  man  should 
be  put,  to  some  extent  at  least,  upon  his  guard. 

She  was,  at  any  rate,  not  at  all  unwilling  to  initiate 
him  into  the  mysteries  of  Mr.  Quincunx'  mind,  hoping, 
perhaps,  in  an  obscure  sort  of  way,  that  such  an 
initiation  would  throw  her  own  position,  in  this 
strange  household,  into  a  light  more  evocative  of 
considerate  interest. 

She  had  been  so  often  made  conscious  of  late  that 
in  his  absorption  in  Gladys  he  had  swept  her  brusquely 
aside  as  a  dull  and  tiresome  spoil-sport,  that  it  was 
not   without   a   certain   feminine   eagerness   that   she 


ART  AND   NATURE  221 

embraced  the  thought  of  his  being  compelled  to 
Hsten  to  what  she  well  knew  Mr.  Quincunx  would 
have  to  say  upon  the  matter. 

It  was  also  an  agreeable  thought  that  in  doing 
justice  to  the  originality  and  depth  of  the  recluse's 
intelligence,  the  American  would  be  driven  to  recog- 
nize the  essentially  unintellectual  tone  of  conversation 
at  Nevilton  House. 

She  instinctively  felt  sure  that  the  same  generous 
and  comprehensive  sympathy  that  led  him  to  con- 
done the  vulgar  lapses  of  these  "new  people,"  would 
lead  him  to  embrace  with  more  than  toleration  the 
eccentricities  and  aberration  of  the  forlorn  relative 
of  the  Lords  of  Glastonbury. 

With  these  thoughts  passing  rapidly  through  her 
brain,  Lacrima  found  herself,  after  a  little  further 
hesitation,  agreeing  demurely  to  the  American's  pro- 
posal to  visit  the  tenant  of  Dead  Man's  Lane  before 
the  end  of  the  day.  She  left  it  uncertain  at  what 
precise  hour  they  should  go  —  probably  between  tea 
and  dinner  —  because  she  was  anxious,  for  her  own 
sake,  dreading  her  cousin's  anger,  to  make  the  adven- 
ture synchronize,  if  possible,  with  the  latter's  assigna- 
tion with  Luke,  trusting  that  the  good  turn  she  thus  did 
her,  by  removing  her  artistic  admirer  at  a  critical  junc- 
ture, would  propitiate  the  fair-haired  tyrant's  wrath. 

This  matter  having  been  satisfactorily  settled,  the 
Italian  began  to  feel,  as  she  observed  the  artist's  bold 
and  challenging  glance  embracing  her  from  head  to 
foot,  while  he  continued  to  this  new  and  more  atten- 
tive listener  his  interrupted  monologue,  that  species 
of  shy  and  nervous  restraint  which  invariably  em- 
barrassed her  when  left  alone  in  his  society. 


222  WOOD  AND   STONE 

Inexperienced  at  detecting  the  difference  between 
aesthetic  interest  and  emotional  interest,  and  asso- 
ciating the  latter  with  nothing  but  what  was  brutal 
and  gross,  Lacrima  experienced  a  disconcerting  sort 
of  shame  when  under  the  scrutiny  of  his  eyes. 

Her  timid  comments  upon  his  observations  showed, 
however,  so  much  more  subtle  insight  into  his  mean- 
ing than  Gladys  had  ever  displayed,  that  it  was  with 
a  genuine  sense  of  regret  that  he  accepted  at  last 
some  trifling  excuse  she  offered  and  let  her  wander 
away.  Feeling  restless  and  in  need  of  distraction  he 
returned  to  the  house  and  sought  the  society  of 
Mrs.  Romer. 

He  discovered  this  good  lady  seated  in  the  house- 
keeper's room,  perusing  an  illustrated  paper  and 
commenting  upon  its  contents  to  the  portly  Mrs. 
Murphy.  The  latter  discreetly  withdrew  on  the 
appearance  of  the  guest  of  the  house,  and  Dangelis 
entered  into  conversation  with  his  hostess. 

"Maurice  Quincunx!"  she  cried,  as  soon  as  her 
visitor  mentioned  the  recluse's  queer  name,  "you 
don't  mean  to  say  that  Lacrima's  going  to  take  you 
to  see  him?  Well  —  of  all  the  nonsensical  ideas  I 
ever  heard!  You'd  better  not  tell  Mortimer  where 
you're  going.  He's  just  now  very  angry  with 
Maurice.  It  won't  please  him  at  all,  her  taking  you 
there.  Maurice  is  related  to  me,  you  know,  not  to 
Mr.  Romer.  Mr.  Romer  has  never  liked  him,  and 
lately  —  but  there!  I  needn't  go  into  all  that. 
We  used  to  see  quite  a  lot  of  him  in  the  old  days, 
when  we  first  came  to  Nevilton.  I  like  to  have  some- 
one about,  you  know,  and  Maurice  was  somebody 
to  talk   to,   when   Mr.    Romer   was  away;  but  lately 


ART  AND   NATURE  223 

things  have  been  quite  different.  It  is  all  very  sad  and 
very  tiresome,  you  know,  but  what  can  a  person  do?" 

This  was  the  nearest  approach  to  a  hint  of  di- 
vergence between  the  master  and  mistress  of  Nevil- 
ton  that  Dangelis  had  ever  been  witness  to,  and  even 
this  may  have  been  misleading,  for  the  shrewd  little 
eyes,  out  of  which  the  lady  peered  at  him,  over  her 
spectacles,  were  more  expressive  of  mild  malignity 
than  of  moral  indignation. 

"But  what  kind  of  person  is  this  Mr.  Quincunx?" 
enquired  the  American.  "I  confess  I  can't,  so  far, 
get  any  clear  vision  of  his  personality.  Won't  you 
tell  me  something  more  definite  about  him,  some- 
thing that  will  'give  me  a  line  on  him,'  as  we  say 
in  the  States?" 

Mrs.  Romer  looked  a  trifle  bewildered.  It  seemed 
that  the  personality  of  Mr.  Quincunx  was  not  a  topic 
that  excited  her  conversational  powers. 

"I  never  really  cared  for  him,"  she  finally  remarked. 
*'He  used  to  talk  so  unnaturally.  He'd  come  over 
here,  you  know,  almost  every  day  —  when  Gladys 
was  a  little  girl,  —  and  talk  and  talk  and  talk.  I 
used  to  think  sometimes  he  wasn't  quite  right  here," 
—  the  good  lady  tapped  her  forehead  with  her  fore- 
finger, —  "but  in  some  things  he  was  very  sensible. 
I  don't  mean  that  he  spoke  loud  or  shouted  or  was 
noisy.  Sometimes  he  didn't  say  very  much;  but 
even  when  he  didn't  speak,  his  listening  was  like 
talking.  Gladys  used  to  be  quite  fond  of  him  when 
she  was  a  little  girl.  He  used  to  play  hide-and-seek 
with  her  in  the  garden.  I  think  he  helped  me  to 
keep  her  out  of  mischief  more  than  any  of  her  gov- 
ernesses did.     Once,  you  know,  he  beat  Tom  Raggles 


224  WOOD   AND   STONE 

—  the  miller's  son  —  because  he  followed  her  across 
the  park  —  beat  him  over  the  head,  they  say,  with 
an  iron  pick.  The  lying  wretch  of  a  lad  swore  that 
she  had  encouraged  him,  and  we  were  driven  to  hush 
the  matter  up,  but  I  believe  Mr.  Quincunx  had  to 
see  the  inspector  in  Yeoborough." 

Beyond  this  somewhat  obscure  incident,  Dangelis 
found  it  impossible  to  draw  from  Mrs.  Romer  any 
intelligible  answer  to  his  questions.  The  figure  of 
the  evasive  tenant  of  the  cottage  in  Dead  Man's 
Lane  remained  as  misty  as  ever. 

A  little  irritated  by  the  ill  success  of  his  psycho- 
logical investigations,  the  artist,  conscious  that  he 
was  wasting  the  morning,  began,  out  of  sheer  capri- 
cious wilfulness,  to  expound  his  aesthetic  ideas  to 
this  third  interlocutor. 

His  nerves  were  in  a  morbid  and  unbalanced  state, 
due  partly  to  a  lapse  in  his  creative  energy,  and  partly 
to  the  fact  that  in  the  depths  of  his  mind  he  was 
engaged  in  a  half-conscious  struggle  to  suppress  and 
keep  in  its  proper  place  the  insidious  physical  attrac- 
tion which  Gladys  had  already  begun  to  exert  upon 
him. 

But  the  destiny  of  poor  Dangelis,  this  inauspi- 
cious morning,  was,  it  seemed,  to  become  a  bore  and 
a  pedant  to  everyone  he  encountered;  for  the  lady 
had  hardly  listened  for  two  minutes  to  his  discourse 
when  she  also  left  him,  with  some  suitable  apology, 
and  went  off  to  perform  more  practical  household 
duties.  "What  did  this  worthy  Quincunx  talk  about, 
that  you  used  to  find  so  tiresome.''"  the  artist  flung 
after  her,  as  she  left  the  room. 

Mrs.  Romer  turned  on  the  threshold.     "He  talked 


ART  AND   NATURE  225 

of  nothing  but  the  bible,"  she  said.  "The  bible  and 
our  blessed  Lord.  You  can't  blame  me,  Mr.  Dan- 
gelis,  for  objecting  to  that  sort  of  thing,  can  you? 
I  call  it  blasphemy,  nothing  short  of  blasphemy!" 

Dangelis  wondered,  as  he  strolled  out  again  into 
the  air,  intending  to  seek  solace  for  his  irritable 
nerves  in  a  solitary  walk,  whether,  if  it  were  blas- 
phemy in  Nevilton  House  to  refer  to  the  Redeemer 
of  men,  and  a  nuisance  and  a  bore  to  refer  to  heathen 
idolatries,  what  kind  of  topic  it  might  be  that  the 
place's  mental  atmosphere  demanded. 

He  came  to  the  conclusion,  as  he  proceeded  down 
the  west  drive,  that  the  Romer  family  was  more 
stimulating  to  watch,  than  edifying  to  converse  with. 

After  tea  that  evening,  as  Lacrima  had  hoped, 
Gladys  announced  her  intention  of  going  down  to 
the  mill  to  sketch.  This  —  to  Lacrima's  initiated 
ears  —  meant  an  assignation  with  Luke,  and  she 
glanced  quickly  at  Dangelis,  with  a  shy  smile,  to 
indicate  that  their  projected  visit  was  possible.  As 
soon  as  her  cousin  had  departed  they  set  out.  Their 
expedition  seemed  likely  to  prove  a  complete  success. 
They  found  Mr.  Quincunx  in  one  of  his  gayest  moods. 
Had  he  been  expecting  the  appearance  of  the  Ameri- 
can he  would  probably  have  worked  himself  up  into 
a  miserable  state  of  nervous  apprehension;  but  the 
introduction  thus  suddenly  thrust  upon  him,  the 
genial  simplicity  of  the  Westerner's  manners  and  his 
honest  openness  of  speech  disarmed  him  completely. 
In  a  mood  of  this  kind  the  recluse  became  a  charming 
companion. 

Dangelis  was  immensely  delighted  with  him.  His 
original  remarks,  and  the  quaint  chuckling  bursts  of 


226  WOOD   AND   STOXE 

sardonic  laughter  which  accompanied  his  irresistible 
sallies,  struck  the  artist  as  something  completely 
different  from  what  he  had  expected.  He  had 
looked  to  see  a  listless  preoccupied  mystic,  ready  to 
flood  him  with  dreamy  and  wearisome  monologues 
upon  "the  simple  life,"  and  in  place  of  this  he  found 
an  entertaining  and  gracious  gentleman,  full  of  de- 
licious malice,  and  uttering  quip  after  quip  of  sly, 
half-innocent,  half-subtle,  Rabelaisean  humour,  in  the 
most  natural  manner  in  the  world. 

Not  quite  able  to  bring  his  affability  to  the  point 
of  inviting  them  into  his  kitchen,  Mr.  Quincunx  car- 
ried out,  into  a  sheltered  corner,  three  rickety  chairs 
and  a  small  deal  table.  Here,  protected  from  the 
gusty  wind,  he  offered  them  cups  of  exquisitely  pre- 
pared cocoa  and  little  oatmeal  biscuits.  He  asked 
the  American  question  after  question  about  his 
life  in  the  remote  continent,  putting  into  his  en- 
quiries such  naive  and  childlike  eagerness,  that 
Dangelis  congratulated  himself  upon  having  at  last 
discovered  an  Englishman  who  was  not  superior  to 
the  charming  vice  of  curiosity.  Had  the  artist  pos- 
sessed less  of  that  large  and  careless  aplomb  which 
makes  the  utmost  of  every  situation  and  never  teases 
itself  with  criticism,  he  might  have  regarded  the 
recluse's  effusiveness  as  too  deprecatory  and  pro- 
pitiatory in  its  tone.  This,  however,  never  occurred 
to  him  and  he  swallowed  the  solitary's  flattery  with 
joy  and  gratitude,  especially  as  it  followed  so  quickly 
upon  the  conversational  deficiencies  of  Nevilton 
House. 

"I  live  in  the  mud  here,"  said  Mr.  Quincunx,  "and 
that   makes  it  so  excellent  of  you  two  people  from 


ART  AND   NATURE  227 

the  upper  world  to  slip  down  into  the  mud  with 
me." 

"I  think  you  live  very  happily  and  very  sensibly, 
Maurice!"  cried  Lacrima,  looking  with  tender  affec- 
tion upon  her  friend.  "I  wish  we  could  all  live  as  you 
do." 

The  recluse  waved  his  hand.  "There  must  be 
lions  and  antelopes  in  the  world,"  he  said,  "as  well 
as  frogs  and  toads.  I  expect  this  friend  of  yours, 
who  has  seen  the  great  cities,  is  at  this  moment 
wishing  he  were  in  a  cafe  in  New  York  or  Paris, 
rather  than  sitting  on  a  shaky  chair  drinking  my  bad 
cocoa." 

"That's  not  very  complimentary  to  me,  is  it,  Mr. 
Dangelis?"  said  Lacrima. 

"Mr.  Quincunx  is  much  to  be  envied,"  remarked 
the  American.  "He  is  living  the  sort  of  life  that 
every  man  of  sense  would  wish  to  live.  It's  out- 
rageous, the  way  we  let  ourselves  become  slave  to 
objects   and   circumstances  and  people." 

Lacrima,  anxious  in  the  depths  of  her  heart  to 
give  the  American  the  benefit  of  Mr.  Quincunx's 
insight  into  character,  turned  the  conversation  in 
the  direction  of  the  rumored  political  contest  be- 
tween Romer  and  Wone.  She  was  not  quite  pleased 
with  the  result  of  this  manoeuvre,  however,  as  it  at 
once  diminished  the  solitary's  high  spirits  and  led 
to  his  adoption  of  the  familiar  querulous  tone  of 
peevish  carping. 

Mr.  Quincunx  spoke  of  his  remoteness  from  the 
life  around  him.  He  referred  with  bitter  sarcasm 
to  the  obsequious  worship  of  power  from  which  every 
inhabitant  of  the  village  of  Nevilton  suffered. 


228  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"I  laugh,"  he  said,  "when  our  good  socialist  Wone 
gives  vent  to  his  eloquent  protestations.  Really, 
in  his  heart,  he  is  liable  to  just  the  same  cringing 
to  power  as  all  the  rest.  Let  Romer  make  overtures 
to  him,  —  only  he  despises  him  too  much  to  do  that, 
—  and  you'd  soon  see  how  quickly  he'd  swing  round! 
Give  him  a  position  of  power,  Dangelis  —  I  expect 
you  know  from  your  experience  in  your  own  country 
how  this  works  out,  —  and  you  would  soon  find  him 
just  as  tyrannical,  just  as  obdurate." 

"I  think  you're  quite  wrong,  Maurice,"  cried 
Lacrima  impetuously.  "Mr.  Wone  is  not  an  educated 
man  as  you  are,  but  he's  entirely  sincere.  You've 
only  to  listen  to  him  to  understand  his  sincerity." 

A  grievous  shadow  of  irritation  and  pique  crossed 
the  recluse's  face.  Nothing  annoyed  him  more  than 
this  kind  of  direct  opposition.  He  waved  the  objec- 
tion aside.  Lacrima's  outburst  of  honest  feeling  had 
already  undone  the  subtle  purpose  with  which  she 
had  brought  the  American.  Her  evasive  Balaam 
was,  it  appeared,  inclined,  out  of  pure  wilfulness,  to 
bless  rather  than  curse  their  grand  enemy. 

"It's  all  injured  vanity,"  Mr.  Quincunx  w'ent  on, 
throwing  at  his  luckless  girl-friend  a  look  of  quite 
disproportioned  anger.  "Its  all  his  outraged  power- 
instinct  that  drives  him  to  take  up  this  pose.  I  know 
what  I'm  talking  about,  for  I  often  argue  w^ith  him. 
Whenever  I  dispute  the  smallest  point  of  his  theories, 
he  bursts  out  like  a  demon  and  despises  me  as  a 
downright  fool.  He'd  have  got  me  turned  out  of 
the  Social  Meetings,  because  I  contradicted  him  there, 
if  our  worthy  clergyman  hadn't  intervened.  You've 
no  idea  how  deep  this  power-instinct  goes.     You  must 


ART  AND   NATURE  229 

remember,  Mr.  Dangelis,  you  see  a  village  like  ours 
entirely  from  the  outside  and  you  think  it  beautiful, 
and  the  people  charming  and  gentle.  I  tell  you  it's  a 
nest  of  rattlesnakes!  It's  a  narrow,  poisonous  cage, 
full  of  deadly  vindictiveness  and  concentrated  malice. 
Of  course  we  know  what  human  nature  is,  wherever 
you  find  it,  but  if  you  want  to  find  it  at  its  very  worst, 
come  to  Nevilton!" 

"But  you  yourself,"  protested  the  artist,  "are  you 
not  one   of   these   same  people?      I   understand  that 

you  —  " 

Mr.  Quincunx  rose  to  his  feet,  his  expressive  nostrils 
quivering  with  anger.  "I  don't  allow  anyone  to  say 
that  of  me!"  he  cried  "I  may  have  my  faults,  but  I'm 
as  different  from  all  these  rats,  as  a  guillemot  is  differ- 
ent from  a  comorant!" 

He  sat  down  again  and  his  voice  took  almost  a 
pleading  tone.  "You  know  I'm  different.  You  must 
know  I'm  different!  How  could  I  see  all  these  things 
as  clearly  as  I  do  if  it  wasn't  so?  I've  undergone 
what  that  German  calls  'the  Great  Renunciation.' 
I've  escaped  the  will  to  live.  I  neither  care  to  acquire 
myself  this  accursed  power  —  or  to  revolt,  in  jealous 
envy,  against  those  who  possess  it." 

He  relapsed  into  silence  and  contemplated  his 
garden  and  its  enclosing  hedge,  with  a  look  of  pro- 
found melancholy.  Dangelis  had  been  considerably 
distracted  during  the  latter  part  of  this  discourse  by 
his  artistic  interest  in  the  delicate  lines  of  Lacrima's 
figure  and  the  wistful  sadness  of  her  expression.  It 
was  borne  in  upon  him  that  he  had  somewhat  neg- 
lected this  shy  cousin  of  his  exuberant  young  friend. 
He  promised  himself  to  see  more  of  the  Italian,  as 


230 WOOD  AND   STONE 

occasion  served.  Perhaps  —  if  only  Gladys  would 
agree  to  it  —  he  might  make  use  of  her,  also,  in  his 
Dionysian  impressions. 

"Surely,"  he  remarked,  speaking  with  the  surface 
of  his  intelligence,  and  pondering  all  the  while  upon 
the  secret  of  Lacrima's  charm,  "whatever  this  man 
may  be,  he's  not  a  hypocrite,  —  is  he?  From  all  I 
hear  he's  pathetically  in  earnest." 

"Of  course  we  know  he's  in  earnest,"  answered 
Maurice.  "What  I  maintain  is,  that  it  is  his  personal 
vindictiveness  that  creates  his  opinions.  I  believe 
he  would  derive  genuine  pleasure  from  seeing  Nevil- 
ton  House  burnt  to  the  ground,  and  every  one  of  the 
people  in  it  reduced  to  ashes!" 

"That  proves  his  sincerity,"  answered  the  Ameri- 
can, keeping  his  gaze  fixed  so  intently  upon  Lacrima 
that  the  girl  began  to  be  embarrassed. 

"He  takes  the  view-point,  no  doubt,  that  if  the 
present  oligarchy  in  England  were  entirely  destroyed, 
a  new  and  happier  epoch  would  begin  at  once." 

"I'm  sure  Mr.  Wone  is  opposed  to  every  kind  of 
violence,"  threw  in  Lacrima. 

"Nonsense!"  cried  Mr.  Quincunx  abruptly.  "He 
may  not  like  violence  because  he's  afraid  of  it  react- 
ing on  himself.  But  what  he  wants  to  do  is  to  hu- 
miliate everyone  above  him,  to  disturb  them,  to 
prod  them,  to  harass  and  distress  them,  and  if 
possible  to  bring  them  down  to  his  own  level.  He's 
got  his  thumb  on  Lacrima's  friends  over  there," 
—  he  waved  his  hand  in  the  direction  of  Nevil" 
ton  House,  —  "because  they  happen  to  be  at  the 
top  of  the  tree  at  this  moment.  But  if  you  or  I 
were    there,    it    would    be    just    the    same.      It's    all 


ART  AND  NATURE 231 

jealousy.  That's  what  it  is,  —  jealousy  and  envy ! 
He  wants  to  make  every  one  who's  prosperous  and 
eats  meat,  and  drinks  champagne,  know  what  it  is 
to  live  a  dog's  life,  as  he  has  known  it  himself!  I 
understand  his  feelings  very  well.  We  poor  toads,  who 
live  in  the  mud,  get  extraordinary  pleasure  when  any 
of  you  grand  gentlemen  slip  by  accident  into  our 
dirty  pond.  He  sees  such  people  enjoying  themselves 
and  being  happy  and  he  wants  to  stick  a  few  pins 
into  them!" 

"But  why  not,  my  good  sir?"  answered  the  Ameri- 
can. "Why  shouldn't  Wone  use  all  his  energy  to 
crush  Romer,  just  as  Romer  uses  all  his  energy  to 
crush  Wone?" 

Lacrima  sighed.  "I  don't  think  either  of  you  make 
this  world  seem  a  very  nice  place,"  she  observed. 

"A  nice  place?"  cried  Mr.  Quincunx.  "It's  a 
place  poisoned  at  the  root  —  a  place  full  of  gall  and 
wormwood!" 

"In  my  humble  opinion,"  said  the  American,  "it's 
a  splendid  world.  I  love  to  see  these  little  struggles 
and  contests  going  on.  I  love  to  see  the  delicious 
inconsistences  and  self-deceptions  that  we're  all 
guilty  of.  I  play  the  game  myself,  and  I  love  to 
see  others  play  it.  Its  the  only  thing  I  do  love, 
except — "  he  added  after  a  pause — "except  my 
pictures." 

"I  loathe  the  game,"  retorted  the  recluse,  "and  I 
find  it  impossible  to  live  with  people  who  do  not 
loathe  it  too." 

"Well  —  all  I  can  say,  my  friend,"  observed  Dan- 
gelis,  "is  that  this  business  of  'renouncing,'  of  which 
you   talk,   doesn't  appeal   to   me.     It   strikes   me  as 


232  WOOD  AND   STONE 

a  backing  down  and  scurrying  away,  from  the  splen- 
did adventure  of  being  alive  at  all.  What  are  you 
alive  for,"  he  added,  "if  you  are  going  to  condemn 
the  natural  combatative  instinct  of  men  and  women 
as  evil  and  horrible?  They  are  the  instincts  by 
which  we  live.  They  are  the  motives  that  propel  the 
whole  universe." 

"Mr.  Wone  would  say,"  interposed  Lacrima,  "and 
I'm  not  sure  that  I  don't  agree  with  him,  that  the 
real  secret  of  the  universe  is  deeper  than  all  these 
unhappy  struggles.  I  don't  like  the  unctuous  way 
he  puts  these  things,  but  he  may  be  right  all  the 
same." 

"There's  no  secret  of  the  universe.  Miss  TrafEo," 
the  American  threw  in.  "There  are  many  things 
we  don't  understand.  But  no  one  principle,  —  not 
even  the  principle  of  love  itself,  can  be  allowed  to 
monopolize  the  whole  field.  Life,  I  always  feel,  is 
better  interpreted  by  Art  than  by  anything  else,  and 
Art  is  equally  interested  in  every  kind  of  energy." 

Lacrima's  face  clouded,  and  her  hands  fell  wearily 
upon  her  lap. 

"Some  sorts  of  energy,"  she  observed,  in  a  low 
voice,  "are  brutal  and  dreadful.  If  Art  expresses  that 
kind,  I'm  afraid  I  don't  care  for  Art." 

The  American  gave  her  a  quick,  puzzled  glance. 
There  was  a  sorrowful  intensity  about  her  tone  which 
he  found  difficult  to  understand. 

"What  I  meant  was,"  he  said,  "that  logically  we 
can  only  do  one  of  two  things,  —  either  join  in  the 
game  and  fight  fiercely  and  craftily  for  our  own  hand, 
or  take  a  convenient  drop  of  poison  and  end  the  whole 
affair." 


ART  AND   NATURE  233 

The  melancholy  eyes  of  Mr.  Quincunx  opened  very 
wide  at  this,  and  a  fluttering  smile  twitched  the  cor- 
ners of  his  mouth. 

"We  poor  dogs,"  he  said,  "who  are  not  wanted  in 
this  world,  and  don't  believe  in  any  other,  are  just 
the  people  who  are  most  unwilling  to  finish  ourselves 
off  in  the  way  you  suggest.  We  can't  help  a  sort  of 
sneaking  hope,  that  somehow  or  another,  through 
no  efl"ort  of  our  own,  things  will  become  better  for 
us.  The  same  cowardice  that  makes  us  draw  back 
from  life,  makes  us  draw  back  from  the  thought  of 
death.  Can't  you  understand  that,  —  you  American 
citizen?" 

Dangelis  looked  from  one  to  another  of  his  com- 
panions. He  could  not  help  thinking  in  his  heart  of 
the  gay  animated  crowds,  who,  at  that  very  moment, 
in  the  streets  of  Toledo,  Ohio,  were  pouring  along 
the  side-walks  and  flooding  the  picture  shows.  These 
quaint  Europeans,  for  all  their  historic  surroundings, 
were  certainly  lacking  in  the  joy  of  life. 

"I  can't  conceive,"  remarked  Mr.  Quincunx  sud- 
denly, and  with  that  amazing  candour  which  distin- 
guished him,  "how  a  person  as  artistic  and  sensitive 
as  you  are,  can  stay  with  those  people  over  there. 
Anyone  can  see  that  you're  as  different  from  them  as 
light  from  darkness." 

"My  dear  sir,"  replied  the  American,  interrupting 
a  feeble  little  protest  which  Lacrima  was  beginning 
to  make  at  the  indiscretion  of  her  friend,  "I  may  or 
may  not  understand  your  wonder.  The  point  is, 
that  my  whole  principle  of  life  is  to  deal  boldly  and 
freely  with  every  kind  of  person.  Can't  you  see  that 
I   like  to   look  on   at   the   spectacle   of   Mr.   Romer's 


234 WOOD  AND  STONE 

energy  and  prosperity,  just  as  I  like  to  look  on  at 
the  revolt  against  these  things  in  the  mind  of  our 
friend  Wone.  I  tell  you  it  tickles  my  fancy  to  touch 
this  human  pantomime  on  every  possible  side.  The 
more  unjust  Romer  is  towards  Wone,  the  more  I 
am  amused.  And  the  more  unjust  Wone  is  towards 
Romer,  the  more  I  am  amused.  It  is  out  of  the 
clash  of  these  opposite  injustices  that  nature,  —  how 
shall  I  put  it.'*  —  that  nature  expands  and  grows." 

Mr.  Quincunx  gazed  at  the  utterer  of  these  anti- 
nomian  sentiments,  with  humorous  interest.  Dangelis 
gathered,  from  the  twitching  of  his  heavy  mous- 
tache, that  he  was  chuckling  like  a  goblin.  The 
queer  fellow  had  a  way  of  emerging  out  of  his  mel- 
ancholy, at  certain  moments,  like  a  badger  out  of  his 
hole;  and  at  such  times  he  would  bring  the  most  ideal 
or  speculative  conversation  down  with  a  jerk  to  the 
very  bed-rock  of  reality. 

"What's  amusing  you  so?"  enquired  the  citizen 
of  Ohio. 

"I  was  only  thinking,"  chuckled  Mr.  Quincunx, 
stroking  his  beard,  and  glancing  sardonically  at 
Lacrima,  "that  the  real  reason  of  your  enjoying 
yourself  at  Nevilton  House,  is  quite  a  different  one 
from  any  you  have  mentioned." 

Dangelis  was  for  the  moment  quite  confused.  "Con- 
found the  fellow!"  he  muttered  to  himself,  "I'm 
curst  if  I'm  sorry  he's  under  the  thumb  of  our  friend 
Romer!" 

His  equanimity  was  soon  restored,  however,  and  he 
covered  his  confusion  by  assuming  a  light  and  flip- 
pant air. 

"Ha!    ha!"  he  exclaimed,  "so  you're  thinking  I've 


ART  AND   NATURE  235 

been  caught  by  this  young  lady's  cousin?  Well! 
I  don't  mind  confessing  that  we  get  on  beautifully 
together.  But  as  for  anything  else,  I  think  Miss 
Traffio  will  bear  witness  that  I  am  quite  as  devoted 
to  the  mother  as  the  daughter.  But  Gladys  Romer 
must  be  admitted  a  very  attractive  girl,  —  mustn't  she 
Miss  Traffio.'^  I  suppose  our  friend  here  is  not  so 
stern  an  ascetic  as  to  refuse  an  artist  like  me  the 
pleasure  of  admiring  such  adorable  suppleness  as 
your  cousin  possesses;  such  a  —  such  a  — "  he  waved 
his  hand  vaguely  in  the  air,  "such  a  free  and  flexible 
sort  of  grace?" 

Mr.  Quincunx  picked  up  a  rough  ash  stick  which 
lay  on  the  ground  and  prodded  the  earth.  His  face 
showed  signs  of  growing  once  more  convulsed  with 
indecent  merriment. 

"Why  do  you  use  all  those  long  words?"  he  said. 
"We  country  dogs  go  more  straight  to  the  point  in 
these  matters.  Flexible  grace!  Can't  you  confess 
that  you're  bitten  by  the  old  Satan,  which  we  all 
have  in  us?  Adorable  suppleness!  Why  can't  you 
say  a  buxom  wench,  a  roguish  wench,  a  playful 
wanton  wench?  We  country  fellows  don't  under- 
stand your  subtle  artistic  expressions.  But  we  know 
what  it  is  when  an  honest  foreigner  like  yourself 
goes  walking  and  talking  with  a  person  like  Madame 
Gladys!" 

Glancing  apprehensively  at  the  American's  face 
Lacrima  saw  that  her  friend's  rudeness  had  made 
him,  this  time,  seriously  angry. 

She  rose  from  her  chair.  "We  must  be  getting 
back,"  she  said,  "or  we  shall  be  late.  I  hope  you  and 
Mr.  Dangelis  will  know  more  of  one  another,  before 


230  WOOD   AND   STONE 

he  has  to  leave  Nevilton.  I'm  sure  you'll  find  that 
you've  quite  a  lot  in  common,  when  you  really 
begin  to  understand  each  other." 

The  gravity  and  earnestness  with  which  she  uttered 
these  words  made  both  her  companions  feel  a  little 
ashamed. 

"After  all,"  thought  the  artist,  "he  is  a  typical 
Englishman." 

"After  all,"  thought  Mr.  Quincunx,  "I've  always 
been  told  that  Americans  treat  women  as  if  they  were 
made  of  tissue-paper." 

Their  parting  from  the  recluse  at  his  garden  gate 
was  friendly  and  natural.  Mr.  Quincunx  reverted 
to  his  politest  manner,  and  the  artist's  good  temper 
seemed  quite  restored. 

In  retrospect,  after  the  passing  of  a  couple  of  days, 
spent  by  Dangelis  in  preparing  the  accessories  of  his 
Ariadne  picture,  and  by  Gladys  in  unpacking  certain 
mysterious  parcels  telegraphed  for  to  London,  the 
American  found  himself  recalling  his  visit  to  Dead 
Man's  Cottage  with  none  but  amiable  feelings.  The 
third  morning  which  followed  this  visit,  dawned 
upon  Nevilton  with  peculiar  propitiousness.  The 
air  was  windless  and  full  of  delicious  fragrance.  The 
bright  clear  sunshine  seemed  to  penetrate  every  por- 
tion of  the  spacious  Elizabethan  mansion  and  to 
turn  its  corridors  and  halls,  filled  with  freshly  plucked 
flowers,  into  a  sort  of  colossal  garden  house. 

Dangelis  rose  that  morning  with  a  more  than 
normal  desire  to  plunge  into  his  work.  He  was  con- 
siderably annoyed,  however,  to  find  that  Gladys  had 
actually  arranged  to  have  Mr.  Clavering  invited  to 
lunch  and  had  gone  so  far  as  to  add  a  pencilled  scrawl 


ART  AND   NATURE  237 

of  her  own  —  she  herself  laughingly  confessed  as 
much  —  to  her  mother's  formal  note,  begging  him  to 
appear  in  the  middle  of  the  forenoon,  as  she  had  a 
"surprise"  in  store  for  him. 

The  American's  anxiety  to  begin  work  as  soon  as 
possible  with  his  attractive  model,  made  him  sufiFer 
miseries  of  impatience,  while  Gladys  amused  herself 
with  her  Ariadne  draperies,  making  Lacrima  dress 
and  undress  her  twenty  times,  behind  the  screens  of 
the  studio. 

She  appeared  at  last,  however,  and  the  artist, 
looking  up  at  her  from  his  canvas,  was  for  the 
moment  staggered  by  her  beauty.  The  instinctive 
taste  of  her  cousin's  Latin  fingers  was  shown  in  the 
exquisite  skill  with  which  the  classical  folds  of  the 
dress  she  wore  accentuated  the  natural  charm  of  her 
young  form. 

The  stuff  of  which  her  chief  garment  was  made 
was  of  a  deep  gentian  blue  and  the  contrast  between 
this  color  and  the  dazzling  whiteness  of  her  neck  and 
arms  was  enough  to  ravish  not  only  the  aesthetic 
soul  in  the  man  but  his  more  human  senses  also. 
Her  bare  feet  were  encased  in  white  sandals,  bound 
by  slender  leathern  straps,  which  were  twisted  round 
her  legs  almost  as  high  as  the  knee.  A  thin  metal 
band,  of  burnished  bronze,  was  clasped  about  her 
head  and  over  and  under  this,  her  magnificent  sun- 
coloured  hair  flowed,  in  easy  and  natural  waves,  to 
where  it  was  caught  up,  in  a  Grecian  knot,  above  the 
nape  of  her  neck.  Save  for  this  band  round  her  head 
she  wore  no  clasps  or  jewelry  of  any  kind,  and  the 
softness  of  her  flesh  was  made  more  emphatic  by 
the  somewhat  rough  and  coarse  texture  of  her  loosely 


238  WOOD   AND   STONE 

folded  drapery.  Dangelis  was  so  lost  in  admiration 
of  this  delicious  apparition,  that  he  hardly  noticed 
Lacrima's  timid  farewell,  as  the  Italian  slipped  away 
into  the  garden  and  left  them  together.  It  was  in- 
deed not  till  Gladys  had  descended  from  the  little 
wooden  platform  and  coyly  approached  the  side  of  his 
easel,  that  the  artist  recovered  himself. 

"Upon  my  soul,  but  you  look  perfectly  wonderful!" 
he  cried  enthusiastically.  "Quick!  Let's  to  business. 
I  want  to  get  well  started,  before  we  have  any  inter- 
ruption." 

He  led  her  back  to  the  platform,  and  made  her 
lean  in  a  semi-recumbent  position  upon  a  cushioned 
bench  which  he  had  prepared  for  the  purpose.  He 
took  a  long  time  to  satisfy  himself  as  to  her  precise 
pose,  but  at  last,  with  a  lucky  flash  of  inspiration, 
and  not  without  assistance  from  Gladys  herself,  whose 
want  of  aesthetic  feeling  w^as  compensated  for  in 
this  case  by  the  profoundest  of  all  feminine  instincts, 
he  found  for  her  the  inevitable,  the  supremely  effec- 
tive, position.  It  was  with  a  thrill  of  exquisite  sweet- 
ness, pervading  both  soul  and  senses,  that  he  began 
painting  her.  He  felt  as  though  this  were  one  of  the 
few  flawless  and  unalloyed  moments  of  his  life. 
Everything  in  him  and  about  him  seemed  to  vibrate 
and  quiver  in  response  to  the  breath  of  beauty  and 
youth.  Penetrated  by  the  delicate  glow  of  a  passion 
which  was  free,  at  present,  from  the  sting  of  sensual 
craving,  he  felt  as  though  all  the  accumulative  im- 
pressions, of  a  long  procession  of  harmonious  days, 
were  summed  up  and  focussed  in  this  fortunate  hour. 
The  loveliness  of  the  young  girl,  as  he  transferred  it, 
curve  by  curve,   shadow  by   shadow,   to  his  canvas, 


ART  AND   NATURE  239 

seemed  expressive  of  a  reserved  secret  of  enchant- 
ment, until  tliis  moment  withheld  and  concealed  from 
him.  The  ravishing  contours  of  her  lithe  figure  seemed 
to  open  up,  to  his  magnetized  imagination,  vistas 
and  corridors  of  emotion,  such  as  he  had  never  even 
dreamed  of  experiencing.  She  was  more  than  a 
supremely  lovely  girl.  She  was  the  very  epitome  and 
incarnation  of  all  those  sunward  striving  forces  and 
impulses,  which,  rising  from  the  creative  heart  of  the 
universe,  struggle  upwards  through  the  resisting 
darkness.  She  was  a  Sun-child,  a  creature  of  air  and 
earth  and  fire,  a  daughter  of  Circe  and  Dionysus;  and 
as  he  drained  the  so  frankly  offered  philtre  of  her 
intoxicating  beauty,  and  flung  his  whole  soul's  re- 
sponse to  it  in  glowing  color  upon  the  canvas,  he 
felt  that  he  would  never  again  thus  catch  the  fates 
asleep,  or  thus  plunge  his  hands  into  the  nectar  of 
the  supreme  gods. 

The  world  presented  itself  to  him  at  that  moment, 
while  he  swept  his  brush  with  fierce  passionate  energy 
across  the  canvas,  as  bathed  in  translucent  and  un- 
clouded ether.  Everything  it  contained,  of  weakness 
and  decadence,  of  gloom  and  misgiving,  seemed  to  be 
transfigured,  illuminated,  swallowed  up.  He  felt  as 
though,  in  thus  touching  the  very  secret  of  divine 
joy,  held  in  the  lap  of  the  abysmal  mothers,  nothing 
but  energy  and  beauty  and  creative  force  would 
ever  concern  or  occupy  him  again.  All  else,  —  all 
scruples,  all  questions,  all  problems,  all  renunciations 
—  seemed  but  irrelevant  and  negligible  vapour,  com- 
pared with  this  glorious  and  sun-lit  stream  of  life. 
He  worked  on  feverishly  at  his  task.  By  degrees, 
and  in  so  incredibly  a  short  time  that  Gladys  herself 


240  WOOD  AND   STONE 

was  astonished  when  he  told  her  she  could  rest  and 
stretch  herself  a  little,  the  figure  of  the  Ariadne  he 
had  seen  in  his  imagination  limned  itself  against  the 
expectant  background.  He  was  preparing  to  resume 
his  labour,  and  Gladys,  after  a  boyish  scramble  into 
the  neighbouring  conserv^atory,  and  an  eager  return 
to  the  artist's  side  with  a  handful  of  early  strawber- 
ries, was  just  re-mounting  the  platform,  when  the  door 
of   the  studio  opened   and   Hugh    Clavering   entered. 

He  had  been  almost  inclined,  —  in  so  morbid  a 
condition  were  his  nerves  —  to  knock  at  the  door  be- 
fore coming  in,  but  a  lucky  after-thought  had  re- 
minded him  that  such  an  action  would  have  been 
scandalously     inappropriate. 

Assuming  an  air  of  boyish  familiarity,  which  har- 
monized better  perhaps  with  her  leather-bound  ankles 
than  with  her  girlish  figure,  Gladys  jumped  down  at 
once  from  the  little  stage  and  ran  gaily  to  welcome  him. 
She  held  out  her  hand,  and  then,  raising  both  her  arms 
to  her  head  and  smoothing  back  her  bright  hair  beneath 
its  circlet  of  bronze,  she  inquired  of  him,  in  a  soft  low 
murmur,  whether  he  thought  she  looked  "nice." 

Clavering  was  struck  dumb.  He  had  all  those 
shivering  sensations  of  trembling  agitation  which  are 
described  with  such  realistic  emphasis  in  the  frag- 
mentary poem  of  Sappho.  The  playful  girl,  her  fair 
cheeks  flushed  with  excitement  and  a  treacherous 
light  in  her  blue  eyes,  swung  herself  upon  the  rough 
oak  table  that  stood  in  the  middle  of  the  room,  and 
sat  there,  smiling  coyly  at  him,  dangling  her  sandalled 
feet.  She  still  held  in  her  hand  the  strawberries  she 
had  picked;  and  as,  with  childish  gusto,  she  put  one 
after  another  of  these  between  her  lips,  she  looked  at 


ART  AND   NATURE  241 

him  with  an  indescribable  air  of  mischievous,  challeng- 
ing defiance. 

"So  this  is  the  pagan  thing,"  thought  the  poor 
priest,  "that  it  is  my  duty  to  initiate  into  the  re- 
ligion of  sacrifice!" 

He  could  not  prevent  the  passing  through  his  brain 
of  a  grotesque  and  fantastic  vision  in  which  he  saw 
himself,  like  a  second  hermit  of  the  Thebaid,  leading 
this  equivocal  modern  Thais  to  the  waters  of  Jordan. 
Certainly  the  association  of  such  a  mocking  white- 
armed  darling  of  errant  gods  with  the  ceremony  of 
confirmation  was  an  image  somewhat  difficult  to  em- 
brace! The  impatient  artist,  apologizing  profusely  to 
the  embarrassed  visitor,  soon  dragged  off  his  model 
to  her  couch  on  the  platform,  and  it  fell  to  the  lot  of 
the  infatuated  priest  to  subside  in  paralyzed  helpless- 
ness, on  a  modest  seat  at  the  back  of  the  room. 
What  thoughts,  what  wild  unpermitted  thoughts, 
chased  one  another  in  strange  procession  through  his 
soul,  as  he  stared  at  the  beautiful  heathen  figure  thus 
presented  to  his  gaze! 

The  movements  of  the  artist,  the  heavy  stream  of 
sunlight  falling  aslant  the  room,  the  sweet  exotic 
smells  borne  in  from  the  window  opening  on  the  con- 
servatory, seemed  all  to  float  and  waver  about  him, 
as  though  they  were  things  felt  by  a  deep-sea  diver 
beneath  a  weight  of  humming  waters.  He  gave  him- 
self up  completely  to  what  that  moment  brought. 

Faith,  piety,  sacrifice,  devotion,  became  for  him 
mere  words  and  phrases  —  broken,  fragmentary,  un- 
meaning —  sounds  heard  in  the  shadow-land  of  sleep, 
vague  and  indistinct  like  the  murmur  of  drowned 
bells  under  a  brimming  tide. 


24^2  AYOOD  AND   STONE 

It  may  well  be  believed  that  the  langourously 
reclining  model  was  not  in  the  least  oblivious  to  the 
effect  she  produced.  This  was,  indeed,  one  of  Gladys' 
supreme  moments,  and  she  let  no  single  drop  of  its 
honeyed  distillation  pass  undrained.  She  permitted 
her  heavy-lidded  blue  eyes,  suffused  with  a  soft 
dreamy  mist,  to  rest  tenderly  on  her  impassioned 
lover;  and  as  if  in  response  to  the  desperate  longing 
in  his  look,  a  light-fluttering,  half-wistful  smile  crossed 
her  parted  lips,  like  a  ripple  upon  a  shadowy  stream. 

The  girl's  vivid  consciousness  of  the  ecstasy  of 
power  was  indeed,  in  spite  of  her  apparent  lethargic 
passivity,  never  more  insanely  aroused.  Lurking 
beneath  the  dreamy  sweetness  of  the  look  with 
which  she  responded  to  Clavering's  magnetized  gaze, 
were  furtive  depths  of  Circean  remorselessness.  Under 
her  gentian-blue  robe  her  youthful  breast  trembled 
with  exultant  pleasure,  and  she  felt  as  though,  with 
every  delicious  breath  she  drew,  she  were  drinking  to 
the  dregs  the  very  wine  of  the  immortals. 

"I  must  give  Mr.  Clavering  some  strawberries!"  she 
suddenly  cried,  jumping  to  her  feet,  and  breaking 
both  the  emotional  and  the  aesthetic  spell  as  if  they 
were  gossamer-threads.     "He  looks  bored  and  tired." 

In  vain  the  disconcerted  artist  uttered  an  imploring 
groan  of  dismay,  as  thus,  at  the  critical  moment,  his 
model  betrayed  him.  In  vain  the  bewildered  priest 
professed  his  complete  innocence  of  any  wish  for 
strawberries. 

The  wayward  girl  clambered  once  more  through 
the  conservatory  window,  at  the  risk  of  spoiling 
her  Olympian  attire,  and  returning  with  a  hand- 
ful   of    fruit,    tripped    coquettishly    up    to    both    of 


ART  AND   NATURE  243 

them  in  turn  and  insisted  on  their  dividing  the 
spoil. 

Had  either  of  the  two  men  been  in  a  mood  for 
classical  reminiscences,  the  famous  image  of  Circe 
feeding  her  transformed  lovers  might  have  been  irre- 
sistibly evoked.  They  were  all  three  thus  occupied,  — 
the  girl  in  the  highest  spirits,  and  both  men  feeling 
a  little  sulky  and  embarrassed,  when,  to  the  general 
consternation,  the  door  began  slowly  to  open,  and 
a  withered  female  figure,  clad  in  a  ragged  shawl  and 
a  still  more  dilapidated  skirt  made  its  entry  into  the 
room. 

"Why,  it's  Witch-Bessie!"  cried  Gladys,  involun- 
tarily clutching  at  Clavering's  arm.  "Wicked  old 
thing!  She  gave  me  quite  a  start.  Well,  Bessie, 
what  do  you  want  here.^  Don't  you  know  the  way 
to  the  back  door?  You  mustn't  come  round  to  the 
front  like  this.     What  do  you  want.''" 

Each  of  the  model's  companions  made  a  charac- 
teristic movement.  Dangelis  began  feeling  in  his 
pocket  for  some  suitable  coin,  and  Clavering  raised 
his  hand  with  an  half-reproachful,  half-conciliatory, 
and  altogether  pastoral  gesture,  as  if  at  the  same 
time  threatening  and  welcoming  a  lost  sheep  of  his 
flock. 

But  Witch-Bessie  had  only  eyes  for  Gladys.  She 
stared  in  petrified  amazement  at  the  gentian-blue 
robe  and  the  boyish  sandals. 

"Send  her  away!"  whispered  the  girl  to  Mr. 
Clavering.  "Tell  her  to  go  to  the  back  door.  They'll 
give  her  food  and  things  there." 

The  cadaverous  stare  of  the  old  woman  relaxed 
at  last.     Fixing  her  colourless  eyes  on  the  two  men, 


244  WOOD   AXD   STONE 

and  pointing  at  Gladys  with  her  skinny  hand,  she 
cried,  in  a  shrill,  querulous  voice,  that  rang  unpleas- 
antly through  the  studio,  "What  be  she  then,  touzled 
up  in  like  of  this?  What  be  she  then,  with  her 
Jezebel  face  and  her  shameless  looks?  Round  to 
back  door,  is  it,  'ee  'd  have  me  sent?  I  do  know 
who  you  be,  well  enough.  Master  Clavering,  and  I 
do  guess  this  gentleman  be  him  as  they  say  does 
bide  here;  but  what  be  she,  tricketed  up  in  them  out- 
landish clothes,  like  a  Gypoo  from  Roger-town 
Fair?     Be  she  Miss  Gladys  Romer,  or  baint  she?" 

"Come,  Bessie,"  said  Clavering  in  propitiatory 
tone.  "Do  as  the  young  lady  says  and  go  round  to 
the  back.  I'll  go  with  you  if  you  like.  I  expect 
they'll  have  plenty  of  scraps  for  you  in  that  big 
kitchen." 

He  laid  his  hand  on  the  old  woman's  shoulder  and 
tried  to  usher  her  out.  But  she  turned  on  him 
angrily.  "Scraps!"  she  cried.  "Scraps  thee  own  self ! 
What  does  the  like  of  a  pair  of  gentlemen  such  as 
ye  be,  flitter-mousing  and  flandering  round,  with  a 
hussy  like  she?" 

She  turned  furiously  upon  Gladys,  waving  aside 
with  a  snort  of  contempt  the  silver  coin  which 
Dangelis,  with  a  vague  notion  that  "typical  English 
beggars  "  should  be  cajoled  with  gifts,  sought  to  press 
into  her  hand. 

"'Twas  to  speak  a  bit  of  my  mind  to  'ee,  not  to 
beg  at  your  blarsted  back  door  that  I  did  come  this 
fine  morning!  Us  that  do  travel  by  night  and  by 
day  hears  precious  strange  things  sometimes.  Wliat 
for,  my  fine  lady,  did  ye  go  and  swear  to  policeman 
Frank,  down  in  Nevilton,  that  'twas  I  took  your  God- 


ART  AND   NATURE  245 

darned  pigeons?  Your  dad  may  be  a  swinking  magis- 
trate, what  can  send  poor  folks  to  gaol  for  snaring 
rabbities,  or  putting  a  partridge  in  the  pot  to  make 
the  cabbage  tasty,  but  what  right  does  that  give  a 
hussy  like  thee  to  send  policeman  Frank  swearing 
he'll  lock  up  old  Bessie?  It  don't  suit  wi'  I,  this 
kind  of  flummery;  so  I  do  tell  'ee  plain  and  straight. 
It  don't  suit  wi'  I!" 

"Come,  clear  out  of  this,  my  good  woman!"  cried 
the  indignant  clergyman,  seizing  the  trembling  old 
creature  by  the  arm. 

"Don't  hurt  her!  Don't  hurt  her!"  exclaimed 
Gladys.  "She'll  put  the  evil  eye  on  me.  She  did 
it  to  Nance  Purvis  and  she's  been  mad  ever  since." 

"It's  a  lie!"  whimpered  the  old  woman,  struggling 
feebly  as  Clavering  pulled  her  towards  the  door, 

"It's  your  own  dad  and  Nance's  dad  with  their 
ugly  ways  what  have  driven  that  poor  lass  moon- 
crazy.  Mark  Purvis  do  whip  her  with  withy  sticks  — 
all  the  country  knows  it.  Darn  'ee,  for  a  black  devil's 
spawn,  and  no  blessed  minister,  pulling  and  harrying 
an  old  woman!" 

This,  last  ejaculation  was  addressed  to  the  furious 
Mr,  Clavering,  who  was  now  thrusting  her  by  bodily 
force  through  the  open  door.  With  one  final  effort 
Witch-Bessie  broke  loose  from  him  and  turned  on 
the  threshold.  "Ye  shall  have  the  evil  eye,  since 
ye've  called  for  it,"  she  shrieked,  making  a  wild 
gesture  in  the  air,  in  the  direction  of  the  shrinking 
Ariadne.  "And  what  if  I  let  these  two  gentlemen 
know  with  whom  it  was  ye  were  out  walking  the  other 
night?  I  did  see  'ee,  and  I  do  know  what  I  did  see! 
I'm    a    pigeon-stealer   am    I,    ye    flaunting    flandering 


246  WOOD  AND   STONE 

Gypoo?  Let  me  tell  these  dear  gentlemen  how  as  — " 
Her  voice  died  suddenly  away  in  an  incoherent 
splutter,  as  the  vicar  of  Nevilton,  with  his  hand 
upon  her  mouth,  swung  her  out  of  the  door. 

Gladys  sank  down  upon  a  chair  pale  and  trembling. 

As  soon,  however,  as  the  old  woman's  departure 
seemed  final,  she  began  to  recover  her  equanimity. 
She  gave  vent  to  a  rather  forced  and  uneasy  laugh. 
"Silly  old  thing!"  she  exclaimed.  "This  comes  of 
mother's  getting  rid  of  the  dogs.  She  never  used  to 
come  here  when  we  had  the  dogs.  They  scented  her 
out  in  a  minute.  I  wish  we  had  them  now  to  let  loose 
at  her!     They'd  make  her  skip." 

"I  do  hope,  my  dear  child,"  said  Dangelis 
anxiously,  "that  she  has  not  really  frightened  you? 
What  a  terrible'  old  creature!  I've  always  longed  to 
see  a  typical  English  \\atch,  but  bless  my  heart  if  I 
want  to  see  another!" 

"She's  gone  now,"  announced  Mr.  Clavering,  return- 
ing hot  and  breathless.  "I  saw  her  half-way  down 
the  drive.  She'll  be  out  of  sight  directly.  I  expect 
you  don't  want  to  see  any  more  of  her,  else,  if  you 
come  out  here  a  step  or  two,  you  can  see  her  slink- 
ing away." 

Gladys  thanked  him  warmly  for  his  energetic  de- 
fence of  her,  but  denied  having  the  least  wish  to 
witness  her  enemy's  retreat. 

"It  must  be  getting  near  lunch  time,"  she  said. 
"If  you  don't  mind  waiting  a  moment,  I'll  change 
my  dress."    And  she  tripped  off  behind  the  screens. 


I 


CHAPTER   XII 

AUBER  LAKE 

THE  presence  of  Ralph  Dangelis  in  Nevilton 
House  had  altered,  in  more  than  one  respect, 
the  relations  between  Gladys  and  her  cousin. 

The  girls  saw  much  less  of  each  other,  and  Lacrima 
was  left  comparatively  at  liberty  to  follow  her  own 
devices. 

On  several  occasions,  however,  when  they  were  all 
three  together,  it  chanced  that  the  American  had 
made  himself  extremely  agreeable  to  the  younger 
girl,  even  going  so  far  as  to  take  her  part,  quite  ener- 
getically, in  certain  lively  discussions.  These  occa- 
sions were  not  forgotten  by  Gladys,  and  she  hated 
the  Italian  with  a  hatred  more  deep-rooted  than 
ever. 

As  soon  as  her  first  interest  in  the  American's 
society  began  to  pall  a  little,  she  cast  about  in  her 
mind  for  some  further  way  of  causing  discomfort  and 
agitation  to  the  object  of  her  hatred. 

Only  those  who  have  taken  the  trouble  to  watch 
carefully  what  might  be  called  the  "magnetic  antag- 
onism," between  feminine  animals  condemned  to  live 
in  close  relations  with  one  another,  will  understand  the 
full  intensity  of  what  this  young  person  felt.  It  was 
not  necessarily  a  sign  of  any  abnormal  morbidity  in 
our  fair-haired  friend. 

For  a  man  in  whom  one  is  interested,  even  though 


il 


248  WOOD  AND  STONE 

such  interest  be  mild  and  casual,  to  show  a  definite 
tendency  to  take  sides  against  one,  on  behalf  of  one's 
friend,  is  a  sufficient  justification,  — at  least  so  nature 
seems  to  indicate  —  for  the  awakening  in  one's  heart 
of  an  intense  desire  for  revenge.  Such  desire  is  often 
aroused  in  the  most  well-constituted  temperaments 
among  us,  and  in  this  case  it  might  be  said  that  the 
sound  physical  nerves  of  the  daughter  of  the  Romers 
craved  the  satisfaction  of  such  an  impulse  with  the 
same  stolid  persistence  as  her  flesh  and  blood  craved 
for  air  and  sun.  But  how  to  achieve  it?  What  new 
and  elaborate  humiliation  to  devise  for  this  irritating 
partner  of  her  days? 

The  bathing  episode  was  beginning  to  lose  its 
piquancy.  Custom,  with  its  kindly  obliviousness,  had 
already  considerably  modified  Lacrima's  fears,  and 
there  had  ceased  to  be  for  Gladys  any  further  pleas- 
ure in  displaying  her  aquarian  agility  before  a  com- 
panion so  occupied  with  the  beauty  of  lawn  and 
garden  at  that  magical  hour. 

Fate,  however,  partial,  as  it  often  is,  to  such 
patient  tenacity  of  emotion,  let  fall  at  last,  at  her 
very  feet,  the  opportunity  she  craved. 

She  had  just  begun  to  experience  that  miserable 
sensation,  so  sickeningly  oppressive  to  a  happy  dis- 
position, of  hating  where  she  could  not  hurt,  when, 
one  evening,  news  was  brought  to  the  house  by 
Mark  Purvis  the  game-keeper  that  a  wandering  flock 
of  wild-geese  had  taken  up  its  temporary  abode  amid 
the  reeds  of  Aubcr  Lake.  Mr.  Romer  himself 
soon  brought  confirmation  of  this  fact. 

The  birds  appeared  to  leave  the  place  during  the 
day    and    fly    far    westward,    possibly    as    far    as    the 


AUBER  LAKE  249 

marshes  of  Sedgemoor,  but  they  always  returned  at 
night-fall   to   this   new   tarrying   ground. 

The  very  evening  of  this  exciting  discovery,  Gladys' 
active  mind  formulated  a  thrilling  and  absorbing 
project,  which  she  positively  trembled  with  longing 
to  communicate  to  Lacrima.  She  found  the  long 
dinner  that  night,  and  the  subsequent  chatter  with 
Dangelis  on  the  terrace,  almost  too  tedious  to  be 
endured;  and  it  was  at  an  unusually  early  hour 
that  she  surprised  her  cousin  by  joining  her  in  her 
room. 

The  Pariah  was  seated  at  her  mirror,  wearily  re- 
ducing to  order  her  entangled  curls,  when  Gladys 
entered.  She  looked  very  fragile  in  her  white  bodice 
and  the  little  uplifted  arms,  that  the  mirror  reflected, 
showed  unnaturally  long  and  thin.  When  one  hates 
a  person  with  the  sort  of  massive  hatred  such  as, 
at  that  time,  beat  sullenly  under  Gladys'  rounded 
bosom,  every  little  physical  characteristic  in  the  object 
of  our  emotion  is  an  added  incentive  to  our  revenge- 
ful purpose. 

This  Saturnian  planetary  law  is  unfortunately  not 
confined  to  antipathies  between  persons  of  the  same 
sex.  Sometimes  the  most  unhappy  results  have  been 
known  to  spring  from  the  manner  in  which  one  or 
another,  even  of  two  lovers,  has  lifted  chin  or  head, 
or  moved  characteristically  across  a  room. 

Thus  it  were  almost  impossible  to  exaggerate 
the  loathing  with  which  this  high-spirited  girl  con- 
templated the  pale  oval  face  and  slender  swaying 
arms  of  her  friend,  as  full  of  her  new  project  she 
flung  herself  into  her  favourite  arm  chair  and  met 
Lacrima's    frightened    eyes    in    the    gilded    Georgian 


250  WOOD   AND  STONE 

mirror.  She  began  her  attack  with  elaborate  feline 
obliquity, 

"They  say  Mark  Purvis'  crazy  daughter  has  been 
giving  trouble  again.  He  was  up  this  morning,  talk- 
ing to  father  about  it." 

"Why  don't  you  send  her  away?"  said  the  Italian, 
without  turning  round. 

"Send  her  away?  She  has  to  do  all  the  house- work 
down  there!  Mark  has  no  one  else,  you  know,  and 
the  poor  man  does  not  want  the  expense  of  hiring 
a  woman." 

"Isn't  it  rather  a  lonely  place  for  a  child  like  that?" 

"Lonely?  I  should  think  it  is  lonely!  But  what 
would  you  have?  Somebody  must  keep  that  cottage 
clean;  and  its  just  as  well  a  wretched  mad  girl,  of 
no  use  to  anyone,  should  do  it,  as  that  a  sound  person 
should  lose  her  wits  in  such  a  god-forsaken  spot!" 

"What  does  she  do  at  —  at  these  times?  Is  she 
violent?" 

"Oh,  she  gets  out  in  the  night  and  roams  about  the 
woods.  She  was  once  found  up  to  her  knees  in  the 
water.  No,  she  isn't  exactly  violent.  But  she  is  a 
great  nuisance." 

"It  must  be  terrible  for  her  father!" 

"Well  —  in  a  way  it  does  bother  him.  But  he  is 
not  the  man  to  stand  much  nonsense." 

"I  hope  he  is  kind  to  her." 

Gladys  laughed.  "What  a  soft-hearted  darling 
you  are!  I  expect  he  finds  sometimes  that  you 
can't  manage  mad  people,  any  more  than  you  can 
manage  children,  without  using  the  stick.  But  I 
fancy,  on  the  whole,  he  doesn't  treat  her  badly.  He's 
a  fairly  good-natured  man." 


AUBER  LAKE  251 

The  Pariah  sighed.  "I  think  Mr.  Romer  ought  to 
send  her  away  at  once  to  some  kind  of  home,  and 
pay  someone  to  take  her  place." 

"I  daresay  you  do!  If  you  had  your  way,  father 
wouldn't  have  a  penny  left  in  the  bank." 

The  Pariah  rose  from  her  seat,  crossed  over  to  the 
window,  and  looked  out  into  the  sultry  night.  What 
a  world  this  was!  All  the  gentle  and  troubled 
beings  in  it  seemed  over-ridden  by  gigantic  merciless 
wheels ! 

A  little  awed,  in  spite  of  herself,  by  the  solemnity 
of  her  companion,  Gladys  sought  to  bring  her  back 
out  of  this  translunar  mood  by  capricious  playfulness. 
She  stretched  herself  out  at  full  length  in  her  low  chair, 
and  calling  the  girl  to  her  side,  began  caressing  her, 
pulling  her  down  at  last  upon  her  lap. 

"Guess  what  has  happened!"  she  murmured 
softly,  as  the  quick  beating  of  the  Pariah's  heart 
communicated  itself  to  her,  and  made  her  own  still 
harder. 

"Oh,  I  know  its  something  I  shan't  like,  something 
that  I  shall  dread!"  cried  the  younger  girl,  making 
a  feeble  effort  to  escape. 

"Shall  I  tell  you  what  it  is?"  Gladys  went  on, 
easily  overcoming  this  slight  movement.  "You  know, 
don't  you,  that  there's  a  flock  of  wild-geese  settled  on 
the  island  in  the  middle  of  Auber  Lake?  Well!  I 
have  got  a  lovely  plan.  I've  never  yet  seen  those 
birds,  because  they  don't  come  back  till  the  evening. 
What  you  and  I  are  going  to  do,  darling,  is  to  slip 
away  out  of  the  house,  next  time  Mr.  Dangelis  goes 
to  see  that  friend  of  yours,  and  make  straight  to 
Auber  Lake!     I've  never  been  into  those  woods  by 


252  WOOD   AND   STONE 

night,  and  it'll  be  extraordinarily  thrilling  to  see 
what  Auber  Lake  looks  like  with  the  moon  gleaming 
on  it.  And  then  we  may  be  able  to  make  the  wild- 
geese  rise,  by  throwing  sticks  or  something,  into  the 
water.  Oh,  it'll  be  simply  lovely!  Don't  you  think 
so,  darling?    Aren't  you  quite  thrilled  by  the  idea?" 

The  Pariah  liberated  herself  by  a  sudden  efiFort 
and  stood  erect  on  the  floor. 

*'I  think  you  are  the  wickedest  girl  that  God  ever 
made!"  she  said  solemnly.  And  then,  as  the  full 
implication  of  the  proposed  adventure  grew  upon  her, 
she  clasped  her  hands  convulsively.  "You  cannot 
mean  it!"  she  cried.  "You  cannot  mean  it!  You 
are  teasing  me,  Gladys.  You  are  only  saying  it  to 
tease  me." 

"Why,  you're  not  such  a  coward  as  all  that!" 
her  cousin  replied.  "Think  what  it  must  be  for 
Nance  Purvis,  who  always  lives  down  there!  I 
shouldn't  like  to  be  more  cowardly  than  a  poor  crazy 
labouring  girl.  We  really  ought  to  visit  the  place, 
once  in  a  way,  to  see  if  these  stories  are  true  about 
her  escaping  out  of  the  house.  One  can  never  tell 
from  what  Mark  says.  He  may  have  been  drinking 
and  imagining  it  all." 

Lacrima  turned  away  and  began  rapidly  undressing. 
Without  a  word  she  arranged  the  books  on  her  table, 
moving  about  like  a  person  in  a  trance,  and  without 
a  word  she  slipped  into  bed  and  turned  her  face  to 
the  wall. 

Gladys  smiled,  stretched  herself  luxuriously,  and  con- 
tinued speaking. 

"Auber  Lake  by  moon-light  would  well  be  worth 
a    night  walk.      You    know    it's  supposed   to    be   the 


AUBER   LAKE  253 

most  romantic  spot  in  Somersetshire?  They  say  it's 
incredibly  old.  Some  people  think  it  was  used  in 
prehistoric  times  by  the  druids  as  a  place  of  worship. 
The  villagers  never  dare  to  go  near  it  after  dark. 
They  say  that  very  curious  noises  are  heard  there. 
But  of  course  that  may  only  be  the  mad — " 

She  was  not  allowed  to  go  on.  The  silent  figure 
in  the  bed  suddenly  sat  straight  up,  with  wide-staring 
eyes  fixed  upon  her,  and  said  slowly  and  solemnly, 
"If  I  come  with  you  to  this  place,  will  you  faithfully 
promise  me  that  your  father  will  send  that  girl  into 
a  home?" 

Gladys  was  so  surprised  by  this  unexpected  utter- 
ance that  she  made  an  inarticulate  gasping  noise  in 
her  throat. 

"Yes,"  she  answered,  mesmerized  by  the  Pariah's 
fixed  glance.  "Yes  —  most  certainly.  If  you  come 
with  me  to  see  those  wild-geese,  I'll  make  any 
promise  you  like  about  that  girl!" 

Lacrima  continued  for  a  moment  fixing  her  wdth  wide- 
dilated  pupils. 

Then,  with  a  shiver  that  passed  from  head  to  foot, 
she  slowly  sank  back  on  her  pillows  and  closed  her 
eyes. 

Gladys  rose  a  little  uneasily  from  her  chair.  "But 
of  course,"  she  said,  "you  understand  she  may  not 
want  to  go  away.  She  is  quite  crazy,  you  know.  And 
she  may  prefer  wandering  about  freely  among  dark 
woods  to  being  locked  up  in  a  nice  white-washed 
asylum,  under  the  care  of  fat  motherly  nurses!" 

With  this  parting  shot  she  went  off  into  her  own 
room  feeling  in  a  curious  vague  manner  that  some- 
how or  another  the  edge  of  her  delectation  had  been 


254  WOOD  AND   STONE 

taken  off.  In  this  unexpected  resolution  of  the 
Italian,  the  Mythology  of  Sacrifice  had  suddenly 
struck  a  staggering  blow  at  the  Mythology  of  Power. 
Like  the  point  of  a  bright  silver  sword,  this  unforseen 
vein  of  heroism  in  the  Pariah  cleared  the  sultry  air 
of  that  hot  night  with  a  magical  freshness  and 
coolness.  A  planetary  onlooker  might  have  been 
conscious  at  that  moment  of  strange  spiritual  vibra- 
tions passing  to  and  fro  over  the  sleeping  roofs  of 
Nevilton.  But  perhaps  such  a  one  would  also  have 
been  conscious  of  the  abysmal  indifference  to  either 
stream  of  opposing  influence,  of  the  high,  cold  galaxy 
of  the  Milky  Way,  stretched  contemptuously  above 
them  all! 

All  we  are  able  to  be  certain  of  is,  that  as  the  fair- 
haired  daughter  of  the  house  prepared  for  bed  she 
muttered  sullenly  to  herself.  "I'll  make  her  go  any- 
way. It  will  be  lovely  to  feel  her  shiver,  when  we 
pass  under  those  thick  laurels!  That  mad  girl  won't 
leave  the  place,  unless  they  drag  her  by  force." 

Left  alone,  Lacrima  remained,  for  nearly  two  hours, 
motionless  and  with  closed  eyes.  She  was  not  asleep, 
however.  Strange  and  desperate  thoughts  pursued 
one  another  through  her  brain.  She  wondered  if  she, 
too,  like  the  girl  of  Auber  Lake,  were  destined  to 
find  relief  from  this  merciless  world  in  the  unhinging 
of  her  reason.  She  reverted  again  and  again  in  her 
mind  to  her  cousin's  final  malicious  suggestion. 
That  would  be  indeed,  she  thought,  a  bitter  example 
of  life's  irony,  if  after  going  through  all  this  to  save 
the  poor  wretch,  such  sacrifice  only  meant  worse 
misery  for  her.  But  no!  God  could  not  be  as  unkind 
as  that. 


J 


AUBER  LAKE  255 

She  stretched  out  her  arm  for  a  book  with  which 
to  still  the  troublesome  palpitation  of  her  heart. 

The  book  she  seized  by  chance  turned  out  to  be 
Andersen's  Fairy  Stories,  and  she  read  herself  to 
sleep  with  the  tale  of  the  little  princess  who  wove 
coats  of  nettles  for  her  enchanted  brothers,  and  all 
night  long  she  dreamed  of  mad  unhappy  girls  strug- 
gling amid  entwining  branches,  of  bottomless  lakes  full 
of  terrible  drowned  faces,  and  of  flocks  of  wild-geese 
that  were  all  of  them  kings'  sons! 

The  Saturday  following  this  eventful  colloquy  be- 
tween the  cousins  was  a  day  of  concentrated  gloom. 
There  was  thunder  in  the  vicinity  and,  although  no 
rain  had  actually  fallen  in  Nevilton,  there  was  a 
brooding  presence  of  it  in  the  heavy  atmosphere. 

The  night  seemed  to  descend  that  evening  more 
quickly  than  usual.  By  eight  o'clock  a  strange 
unnatural  twilight  spread  itself  over  the  landscape. 
The  trees  in  the  park  submitted  forlornly  to  a  burden 
of  sultry  indistinction  and  seemed,  in  their  pregnant 
stillness,  to  be  trying  in  vain  to  make  mysterious 
signals  to  one  another. 

Dinner  in  the  gracious  Elizabethan  dining-room 
was  an  oppressive  and  discomfortable  meal  to  all 
concerned.  Mrs.  Romer  was  full  of  tremours  and 
apprehensions  over  the  idea  of  a  possible  thunder- 
storm. 

The  quarry-owner  was  silent  and  preoccupied,  his 
mind  reviewing  all  the  complicated  issues  of  a  new 
financial  scheme.  Dangelis  kept  looking  at  his 
watch.  He  had  promised  to  be  at  Dead  Man's  Lane 
by  nine  o'clock,  and  the  meal  seemed  to  drag  itself 
out  longer  than  he  had  anticipated. 


056  WOOD   AND   STOXE 

He  was  a  little  apprehensive,  too,  as  to  what 
reception  he  would  receive  when  he  did  arrive  at 
Mr.  Quincunx's  threshold. 

Their  last  encounter  had  been  so  extremely  con- 
troversial, that  he  feared  lest  the  sensitive  recluse 
might  be  harbouring  one  of  his  obstinate  psychic 
reactions  at  his  expense. 

He  was  very  unwilling  to  risk  the  loss  of  Mr. 
Quincunx's  society.  There  was  no  one  in  Nevilton 
to  whom  he  could  discourse  quite  as  freely  and 
philosophically  as  he  could  to  the  conscripted  office- 
clerk,  and  his  American  interest  in  a  "representative 
type"  found  inexhaustible  satisfaction  in  listening  to 
the  cynical  murmurings  of  this  eccentric  being. 

Lacrima  was  calm  and  self-contained,  but  she  ate 
hardly  anything;  and  the  hand  with  which  she 
raised  her  glass  to  her  lips  trembled  in  spite  of  all 
her  efforts. 

Gladys  herself  was  exuberant  with  suppressed 
excitement.  Every  now  and  then  she  glanced  fur- 
tively at  the  window,  and  at  other  times,  when  there 
was  no  reason  for  such  an  outburst,  she  gave  vent  to 
a  low  feline  laugh.  She  was  of  the  type  of  animal  that 
the  approach  of  thunder,  and  the  presence  of  electric- 
ity in  the  air,  fills  with  magnetic  nervous  exaltation. 

The  meal  was  over  at  last,  and  the  various  persons 
of  the  group  hastened  to  separate,  each  of  them 
weighed  upon,  as  if  by  an  atmospheric  hand,  with 
the  burden  of  their  own  purposes  and  apprehensions. 

The  two  girls  retired  to  their  rooms.  Mrs.  Romer 
retreated  to  her  favourite  corner  in  the  entrance  hall, 
and  then,  uneasy  even  here,  took  refuge  in  the  as- 
suaging society  of  her  friend  the  housekeeper. 


AUBER  LAKE  257 

Romer  himself  marched  away  gloomily  to  his 
study;  and  Dangelis,  snatching  up  his  coat  and  hat, 
made  off  across  the  south  garden. 

It  did  not  take  the  American  long  to  reach  the 
low  hedge  which  separated  Mr.  Quincunx's  garden 
from  the  lane.  The  recluse  was  awaiting  him,  and 
joined  him  at  once  at  the  gate,  giving  him  no  invita- 
tion to  enter,  and  taking  for  granted  that  their  con- 
versation was  to  be  a  pedestrian  one. 

Mr.  Quincunx  experienced  a  curious  reluctance  to 
allow  any  of  his  friends  to  cross  his  threshold.  The 
only  one  completely  privileged  in  this  matter  was 
young  Luke  Andersen,  whose  gay  urbanity  was  so 
insidious  that  it  would  have  overcome  the  resistance 
of  a  Trappist  monk. 

"Well,  where  are  you  proposing  to  take  me  to- 
night?" enquired  Dangelis,  when  they  had  advanced 
in  silence  some  distance  up  the  hill. 

"To  a  place  that  will  interest  you,  if  your  damned 
artistic  tastes  haven't  quite  spoiled  your  pleasure  in 
little  things!" 

"Not  to  the  Seven  Ashes  again?"  protested  the 
American.     "I  know  this  lane  leads  up  there." 

"You  wait  a  little.  We  shall  turn  off  presently," 
muttered  his  companion.  "The  truth  is  I  am  taking 
you  on  a  sort  of  scouting  expedition  tonight." 

"What  on  earth  do  you  mean?" 

"Well  —  if  you  must  know,  you  shall  know!  I  saw 
Miss  Traffio  yesterday  and  she  asked  me  to  keep  an 
eye  on  Auber  Lake  tonight." 

"What?  That  place  they  were  talking  of?  Where 
the  wild-geese  are?" 

Mr.  Quincunx  nodded.     "It  may,  for  all  I  know, 


258  WOOD   AND   STONE 

be  a  wild-goose  chase.  But  I  find  your  friend  Gladys 
is  up  to  her  little  tricks  again  —  frightening  people 
and  upsetting  their  minds.  And  I  promised  Lacrima 
that  you  and  I  would  stroll  round  that  way  —  just 
to  see  that  the  girls  don't  come  to  any  harm.  Only 
we  mustn't  let  them  know  we're  there.  Lacrima 
would  never  forgive  me  if  Gladys  saw  us." 

"Do  you  mean  to  say  that  those  two  children  are 
going  to  wander  about  these  confounded  damp  woods 
of  yours  alone?"  cried  the  American. 

"Look  here,  Mr.  Dangelis,  please  understand  this 
quite    clearly.      If    you    ever    say    a    word    to    your 
precious  Miss  Gladys  about  this  little  scouting  expe- 
dition, that's  an  end  of  our  talks,  forever  and  a  day!" 

The  citizen  of  Ohio  bowed  with  a  mock  heroic 
gesture,  removing  his  hat  as  he  did  so. 

"I  submit  to  your  conditions,  Don  Quixote.  I  am 
entirely  at  your  service.  Is  it  the  idea  that  we 
should  track  our  friends  on  hands  and  knees?  I  am 
quite  ready  even  for  that,  but  I  know  what  these 
woods  of  yours  are  like." 

Mr.  Quincunx  vouchsafed  no  reply  to  this  ill- 
timed  jocosity.  He  was  anxiously  surveying  the  tall 
hedge  upon  their  right  hand.  "Here's  the  way,"  he 
suddenly  exclaimed.  "Here's  the  path.  We  can  hit 
a  short-cut  here  that  brings  us  straight  through 
Camel's  Cover,  up  to  Wild  Pine.  Then  we  can  slip 
down  into  Badger's  Bottom  and  so  into  the  Auber 
Woods." 

"But  I  thought  the  Auber  Woods  w^ere  much 
nearer  than  that.  You  told  me  the  other  day  that 
you  could  get  into  the  heart  of  them,  in  a  quarter 
of  an  hour  from  your  own  garden!" 


AUBER   LAKE  259 

"And  so  I  can,  my  friend,"  replied  Mr.  Quincunx, 
scrambling  up  the  bank  into  the  field,  and  turning 
to  offer  his  hand  to  his  companion.  "But  it  happens 
that  this  is  the  way  those  girls  are  coming.  At  any 
rate  that  is  what  she  said.  They  were  going  to  avoid 
my  lane  but  they  were  going  to  enter  the  woods 
from  the  Seven  Ashes  side,  just  because  it  is  so 
much  nearer." 

"I  submit,  I  submit,"  muttered  the  artist  blandly. 
"I  only  hope  this  scouting  business  needn't  commence 
till  we  have  got  well  through  Camel's  Cover  and 
Badger's  Bottom!  I  must  confess  I  am  not  alto- 
gether in  love  with  the  sound  of  those  places,  though 
no  doubt  they  are  harmless  enough.  But  you  people 
do  certainly  select  the  most  extraordinary  names  for 
your  localities.  Our  own  little  lapses  in  these  things 
are  classical  compared  with  your  Badgers  and  Camels 
and  Ashes  and  Dead  Men!" 

Mr.  Quincunx  did  not  condescend  to  reply  to  this. 
He  continued  to  plough  his  way  across  the  field, 
every  now  and  then  glancing  nervously  at  the  sky, 
which  grew  more  and  more  threatening.  Walking 
behind  him  and  a  little  on  one  side,  the  American 
was  singularly  impressed  by  the  appearance  he 
presented,  especially  when  the  faint  light  of  the 
pallid  and  cloud-flecked  moon  fell  on  his  uplifted 
profile.  With  his  corrugated  brow  and  his  pointed 
beard,  Mr.  Quincunx  was  a  noticeable  figure  at  any 
time,  but  under  the  present  atmospheric  conditions 
his  lean  form  and  striking  head  made  a  picture  of 
forlorn  desolation  worthy  of  the  sombre  genius  of  a 
Bewick. 

Dangelis   conceived   the   idea   of   a   picture,    which 


2()0  WOOD  AND   STONE 


he   himself    might   be   capable   of   evoking,   with   this 
melancholy,  solitary  figure  as  its  protagonist. 

He  wondered  vaguely  what  background  he  would 
select  as  worthy  of  the  resolute  hopelessness  in  Mr. 
Quincunx's  forlorn  mien. 

It  was  only  after  they  had  traversed  the  sloping 
recesses  of  Camel's  Cover,  and  had  arrived  at  the 
crest  of  the  Wild  Pine  ridge,  that  he  was  able  to 
answer  this  question.  Then  he  knew  at  once.  The 
true  pictorial  background  for  his  eccentric  companion 
could  be  nothing  less  than  that  line  of  wind-shaken, 
rain-washed  Scotch  firs,  which,  visible  from  all  por- 
tions of  Nevilton,  had  gathered  to  themselves  the 
very  essence  of  its  historic  tragedy. 

These  trees,  like  Mr.  Quincunx,  seemed  to  derive 
a  grim  satisfaction  from  their  submission  to  destiny. 
Like  him,  they  submitted  with  a  definite  volition  of 
resolution.  They  took,  as  he  took,  the  line  of  least 
resistance  with  a  sort  of  stark  voluptuousness.  They 
did  not  simply  bow  to  the  winds  and  rains  that  op- 
pressed them.  They  positively  welcomed  them.  And 
yet  all  the  while,  just  as  he  did,  they  emitted  a  low 
melancholy  murmur  of  protest,  a  murmur  as  com- 
pletely different  from  the  howling  eloquence  of  the 
ashes  and  elms,  as  it  was  different  from  the  low 
querulous  sob  of  the  larches  and  elders.  The  rusty-red 
stain,  too,  in  the  rough  bark  of  their  trunks,  was  also 
singularly  congruous  with  a  certain  reddish  tinge, 
which  often  darkened  the  countenance  of  the  recluse, 
especially  when  his  fits  of  goblin-humour  shook  him 
into    convulsive    merriment. 

As  they  paused  for  a  moment  on  this  melancholy 
ridge,  looking  back  at  the  flickering  lights  of  the  vil- 


AUBER   LAKE  261 

lage,  and  down  into  the  darkness  in  front  of  them, 
the  painter  made  a  mental  vow  that  before  he  left 
Nevilton  he  would  sublimate  his  vision  of  Mr.  Quin- 
cunx into  a  genuine  masterpiece.  Plunging  once 
more  into  the  shadows,  they  followed  a  dark  lane 
which  finally  emerged  into  a  wide-sloping  valley.  In 
the  depths  of  this  was  the  secluded  hollow,  full  of 
long  grass  and  tufted  reeds,  which  was  the  place 
known  as  Badger's  Bottom. 

The  entrance  to  Auber  Wood  was  now  at  hand; 
and  as  they  reached  its  sinister  outskirts,  they  both 
instinctively  paused  to  take  stock  of  their  surround- 
ings. The  night  was  more  sultry  than  ever.  The 
leaves  and  grasses  swayed  with  an  almost  impercep- 
tible movement,  as  if  stirred,  not  by  the  wind,  but  by 
the  actual  heavy  breathing  of  the  Earth  herself, 
troubled  and  agitated  in  her  planetary  sleep. 

Sombre  banks  of  clouds  moved  intermittently  over 
the  face  of  a  blurred  moon,  and,  out  of  the  soil  at 
their  feet,  rose  up  damp  exotic  odours,  giving  the 
whole  valley  the  atmosphere  of  an  enormous  hot- 
house. 

It  was  one  of  those  hushed,  steamy  nights,  preg- 
nant and  listening,  which  the  peculiar  conditions  of 
our  English  climate  do  not  often  produce,  and  which 
are  for  that  very  reason  often  quite  startling  in  their 
emotional  appeal.  The  path  which  the  two  men  took, 
after  once  they  had  entered  the  wood,  was  one  that 
led  them  through  a  gloomy  tunnel  of  gigantic,  over- 
hanging laurel-bushes. 

All  the  chief  entrances  to  Auber  Wood  were 
edged  with  these  exotics.  Some  capricious  eighteenth- 
century  Seldom,  —  perhaps  the    one    who  raised  the 


262  WOOD   AND   STONE 

Tower  of  Pleasure  on  the  site  of  the  resting-place  of 
the  Holy  Rood  —  had  planted  them  there,  and  for  more 
than  a  hundred  years  they  had  grown  and  multiplied. 

Auber  Lake  itself  was  the  centre  of  a  circumference 
of  thick  jungle-like  brushwood  which  itself  was  over- 
shadowed by  high  sloping  hills.  These  hills,  also 
heavily  wooded,  formed  a  sort  of  gigantic  cup  or 
basin,  and  the  level  expanse  of  undergrowth  they 
enclosed  was  itself  the  margin  of  a  yet  deeper  con- 
cavity, in  the  middle  of  which  was  the  lake-bed. 

Mingling  curiously  with  the  more  indigenous  trees 
in  this  place  were  several  unusual  and  alien  importa- 
tions. Some  of  these,  like  the  huge  laurels  they  were 
now  passing  under,  belonged  more  properly  to  gar- 
dens than  to  woods.  Others  were  of  a  still  stranger 
and  more  foreign  nature,  and  produced  a  very  bizarre 
effect  where  they  grew,  as  though  one  had  suddenly 
come  upon  the  circle  of  some  heathen  grove,  in  the 
midst  of  an  English  forest.  Auber  Lake  was  cer- 
tainly a  spot  of  an  unusual  character.  Once  it  had 
been  drained,  and  a  large  monolith,  of  the  same  stone 
as  that  produced  by  Leo's  Hill,  had  been  discovered 
embedded  in  the  mud.  Traces  were  said  to  have 
been  discerned  upon  this  of  ancient  human  carving, 
but  local  antiquarianism  had  contradicted  this 
rumour.  At  least  it  may  be  said  that  nowhere  else 
on  the  Romer  estate,  except  perhaps  in  Nevilton 
churchyard,  was  the  tawny-colored  clay  which  bore 
so  close  a  symbolic,  if  not  a  geological,  relation  to 
the  famous  yellow  sandstone,  more  heavily  and 
malignantly  clinging,  in  its  oozy  consistence. 

Dangelis  and  Mr.  Quincunx  advanced  slowly,   and 
in  profound  silence,  along  their  overshadowed  path. 


AUBER  LAKE  263 

An  occasional  wood-pigeon,  disturbed  in  its  roost- 
ing, flapped  awkwardly  through  the  branches;  and 
far  away,  in  another  part  of  the  wood,  sounded  at 
intervals  the  melancholy  cry  of  a  screech-owl. 

Great  leather-winged  bats  flitted  over  their  heads 
with  queer  unearthly  little  cries;  and  every  now  and 
then  some  agitated  moth,  from  the  under-bushes, 
fluttered  heavily  across  their  faces.  Sometimes  in 
the  darkness  their  feet  stumbled  upon  a  dead 
branch,  but  more  often  they  slipped  uneasily  in 
the  deep  ruts  left  in  the  mud  by  the  woodmen's 
carts. 

All  the  various  intermittent  noises  they  heard  only 
threw  the  palpable  stillness  of  the  place  into  heavier 
relief. 

The  artist  from  the  wind-swept  plains  of  Ohio  felt 
as  though  he  had  never  plunged  so  deeply  into  the 
indrawn  recesses  of  the  earth-powers  as  he  was  doing 
now.  It  seemed  to  him  as  though  they  were  approach- 
ing the  guarded  precincts  of  some  dark  and  crouch- 
ing idol.  It  was  as  if,  by  some  ill-omened  mistake, 
they  had  stumbled  unawares  upon  a  spot  that  through 
interminable  ages  had  been  forbidden  to  human 
tread. 

And  yet  the  place  seemed  to  expect  them,  to  await 
them;  to  have  in  reserve  for  them  some  laboured 
pregnancy  of  woeful  significance. 

Once  more,  as  he  walked  behind  Mr.  Quincunx, 
Dangelis  was  startled  by  the  extraordinary  congruity 
of  that  forlorn  figure  with  the  occasion  and  the 
scene.  The  form  of  the  recluse  seemed  to  exhale  a 
reciprocity  of  fearful  brooding.  Auber  Wood  seemed 
aware  of    him,  and  ready  to  welcome    him,  in  con- 


264  WOOD  AND   STONE 

sentaneous  sympathy.  He  might  have  been  the  long- 
expected  priest  of  some  immemorial  rites  transacted 
there,  the  priest  of  some  old  heathen  worship,  perhaps 
the  worship  of  generations  of  dead  people,  buried 
under  those  damp  leaves. 

It  seemed  a  long  while  to  Ralph  Dangelis,  in  spite 
of  the  breathless  quickening  of  his  imagination,  before 
the  laurel-tunnel  thinned  away,  and  the  two  men 
were  able  to  walk  side  by  side  between  the  trunks  of 
the  larger  trees.  Here  again  they  encountered 
Scotch  firs. 

What  strange  dream,  of  what  fantastic  possessor 
of  this  solitude,  had  shaped  itself  into  the  planting 
of  these  moorland  giants,  among  the  native-born 
oaks  and  beeches  of  this  weird  place? 

The  open  spaces  at  the  foot  of  the  tree-trunks 
were  filled  with  an  obscure  mass  of  oozy  stalks  and 
heavily  drooping  leaves.  The  obscurity  of  the  spot 
made  it  difficult  to  discern  the  differences  between 
these  rank  growths;  but  the  ghostly  flowers  of  enor- 
mous hemlocks  stood  forth  form  among  the  rest. 
Fungoid  excrescences,  of  some  sort  or  another,  were 
certainly  prolific  here.  Their  charnel-house  odour 
set  Dangelis  thinking  of  a  morgue  he  had  once 
visited. 

At  last  —  and  with  quite  startling  suddenness  — 
the  path  they  followed  emerged  into  a  wide  open 
expanse;  and  there,  —  under  the  diffused  light  of  the 
cloud-darkened  moon  —  they  saw  stretched  at  their 
feet  the  dim  surface  of  Auber  Lake. 

Mr.  Quincunx  stood  for  a  moment  motionless  and 
silent,  leaning  upon  his  stick.  Then  he  turned  to 
his  companion;  and  the  American  noticed  how  vague 


AUBER  LAKE  ^(55 

and  shadowy  his  face  looked,  as  if  it  were  a  face 
seen  through  some  more  opaque  medium  than  that 
of  air. 

They  sat  down  together  upon  a  fallen  log;  and  out 
of  an  instinctive  desire  to  break  the  tension  of  the 
spell  that  lay  on  him  Dangelis  lit  a  cigarette. 

He  had  smoked  in  silence  for  some  moments, 
when  Mr.  Quincunx,  who  had  been  listening  atten- 
tively, raised  his  hand.  "Hark!"  he  said,  "do  you 
hear  anything?" 

Across  the  stillness  of  the  water  came  a  low  blood- 
curdling wail.  It  was  hardly  a  human  sound,  and 
yet  it  was  not  like  the  voice  of  any  bird  or  beast. 
It  seemed  to  unsettle  the  drowsy  natives  of  the 
spot;  for  a  harsh  twittering  of  sedge-birds  answered 
it,  and  a  great  water-rat  splashed  down  into  the 
lake. 

"God!  they  were  right  then,"  whispered  the 
American.  "They  spoke  of  some  mad  girl  living 
down  here,  but  I  did  not  believe  them.  It  seemed 
incredible  that  such  a  thing  should  be  allowed. 
Quick,  my  friend!  —  we  ought  to  warn  those  girls 
at  once  and  get  them  away.  This  is  not  the  sort  of 
thing  for  them  to  hear." 

They  both  rose  and  listened  intently,  but  the  sound 
was  not  repeated;  only  a  hot  gust  of  wind  coming,  as 
it  were,  out  of  the  lake  itself,  went  quivering  through 
the  reeds. 

"I  don't  imagine,"  said  Mr.  Quincunx  calmly, 
"that  your  young  lady  will  be  much  alarmed.  I 
fancy  she  has  less  fear  of  this  kind  of  thing  than  that 
water-rat  we  heard  just  now.  It'll  terrify  Lacrima, 
though.    But  I  understand  that  your  charming  sw^eet- 


266  WOOD  AND   STONE 

heart  gets  a  good  deal  of  amusement  from  causing 
people  to  feel  terror!" 

Dangelis  was  so  accustomed  to  the  plain-spoken 
utterances  of  the  hermit  of  Dead  Man's  Lane  that 
he  received  this  indictment  of  his  enchantress  with 
complete  equanimity. 

"All  the  same,"  he  remarked,  "I  think  we'd  better 
go  and  meet  them,  if  you  know  the  direction  they're 
coming.  It's  not  a  very  pleasant  proposition,  any 
way,  to  face  escaped  lunatics  in  a  place  like  this." 

"I  tell  you,"  mutterd  Mr.  Quincunx  crossly,  "your 
darling  Gladys  is  coming  here  for  no  other  reason 
than  to  hear  that  girl's  cries.  The  more  they  terrify 
Lacrima,  the  better  she'll  be  pleased." 

"I  don't  know  about  Lacrima,"  answered  Dangelis. 
"I  know  that  devil  of  a  noise  will  scare  me  if  I  hear 
it  again." 

Mr.  Quincunx  did  not  reply.  With  his  hand  on 
his  companion's  arm  he  was  once  more  listening 
intently.  At  the  back  of  his  mind  was  gradually 
forming  a  grim  remote  wish  that  some  overt  act  and 
palpable  revelation  of  Gladys  Romer's  interesting 
character  might  effect  a  change  of  heart  in  the 
citizen  of  Ohio. 

Such  a  wish  had  been  obscurely  present  in  his 
brain  ever  since  they  started  on  this  expedition;  and 
now  that  the  situation  was  developing,  it  took  a 
more  vivid  shape. 

"I  believe,"  he  remarked  at  last,  "I  hear  them 
coming  down  the  path.  Listen!  It's  on  the  other 
side  of  the  pond,  —  over  there."  He  pointed  across 
the  water  to  the  left-hand  corner  of  the  lake.  It 
was  from  the  right-hand  corner,   where  the  keeper's 


AUBER  LAKE  267 

cottage  stood,  that  the  poor  mad  girl's  voice  had 
proceeded. 

"Yes;  I  am  sure!"  he  whispered  after  a  moment's 
pause.  "Come!  quick!  get  in  here;  then  they  won't 
see  us  even  if  they  walk  round  this  way." 

He  pulled  Dangelis  beneath  the  over-hanging  boughs 
of  a  large  weeping  willow.  The  droop  of  this  tree's 
delicate  foliage  made,  in  the  semi-darkness  in 
which  they  were,  a  complete  and  impenetrable 
hiding-place;  and  yet  from  between  the  trailing 
branches,  when  they  held  them  apart  with  their 
hands,  they  had  a  free  and  unimpeded  view  of  the 
whole  surface  of  the  lake. 

The  sound  of  distant  voices  struck  clearly  now  upon 
their  ears;  and  a  moment  after,  nudging  his  com- 
panion, Mr.  Quincunx  pointed  to  two  cloaked  figures 
advancing  across  the  open  space  towards  the  water's 
edge. 

"Hush!"  whispered  the  recluse.  "They  are  bound 
to  come  this  way  now." 

The  two  girls  were,  however,  for  the  moment,  ap- 
parently occupied  with  another  intention.  The  taller 
of  the  two  stopped  and  picked  up  something  from 
the  ground,  and  then  approaching  close  to  the  lake's 
edge  raised  her  arm  and  flung  it  far  into  the  water. 

The  object  she  threw  must  have  been  a  stick  or  a 
stone  of  considerable  size,  for  the  splash  it  produced 
was  startling. 

The  result  was  also  startling.  From  a  little  island 
in  the  middle  of  the  lake,  rose  suddenly,  with  a  tre- 
mendous flapping,  several  large  and  broad-winged 
birds.  They  flew  in  heavy  circles,  at  first,  over  the 
island;    and    then,    descending    to    the    water's    level. 


208  WOOD   AND   STONE 

went  splashing  and  flapping  across  its  surface,  utter- 
ing strange  cries. 

The  noise  made  by  these  birds  had  hardly  subsided, 
as  they  settled  down  in  a  thick  bed  of  reeds,  when, 
once  more,  that  terrible  inhuman  wail  rang  out  upon 
the  night.  Both  men  peered  forth  anxiously  from 
their  hiding-place,  to  see  the  effect  of  this  sound  upon 
their  two  friends. 

They  could  see  that  they  both  stood  stone-still 
for  a  moment  as  if  petrified  by  terror. 

Then  they  noticed  that  the  taller  of  the  two  drew 
her  companion  still  nearer  to  the  water's  edge. 

"If  that  yell  begins  again,"  whispered  the  Ameri- 
can, "I  shall  go  out  and  speak  to  them." 

Mr.  Quincunx  made  no  answer.  He  prayed  in  his 
heart  that  something  would  occur  to  initiate  this 
innocent  Westerner  a  little  more  closely  into  the 
workings  of  his  inamorata's  mind.  It  seemed  indeed 
quite  within  the  bounds  of  possibility  that  the  recluse 
might  be  gratified  in  this  wish,  for  the  girls  began 
rapidly  advancing  towards  them,  skirting  the  edge  of 
the  lake. 

The  two  men  watched  their  approach  in  silence, 
the  artist  savouring  with  a  deep  imaginative  excite- 
ment the  mystical  glamour  of  the  scene. 

He  felt  it  would  be  indelibly  and  forever  imprinted 
on  his  mind,  this  hot  heavily  scented  night,  this 
pallid-glimmering  lake,  those  uneasy  stirrings  of  the 
wild-geese  in  their  obscure  reed-bed,  and  the  fright- 
ful hush  of  the  listening  woods,  as  they  seemed  to 
await  a  repetition  of  that  unearthly  cry. 

The  girls  had  actually  paused  at  the  verge  of  the 
lake,  just   in   front  of  their  hiding-place;  so  near,   in 


AUBER   LAKE  269 

fact,  that  by  stretching  out  his  arm,  from  behind 
his  willowy  screen,  Dangelis  could  have  touched 
Gladys  on  the  shoulder,  when  the  fearfully  expected 
voice  broke  forth  again  upon  the  night. 

The  men  could  see  the  visible  tremor  of  panic-fear 
quiver  through  Lacrima's  slight  frame. 

"Oh,  let  us  go!  —  let  us  go!"  she  pleaded,  pulling 
with  feverish  fingers  at  her  companion's  cloak. 

But  Gladys  folded  her  arms  and  flung  back  her 
head. 

"Little  coward!"  she  murmured  in  a  low  unshaken 
voice.  "I  am  not  afraid  of  a  mad  girl's  yelling. 
Look!  there's  one  of  those  birds  going  back  to  the 
island!" 

Once  more  the  inhuman  wail  trembled  across  the 
water. 

"Gladys!  Gladys  dear!"  cried  the  panic-stricken 
girl,  "I  cannot  endure  it!  I  shall  go  mad  myself  if 
we  do  not  go!  I'll  do  anything  you  ask  me!  I'll 
go  anywhere  with  you!  Only  —  please  —  let  us  go 
away  now!" 

The  sound  was  repeated  again,  and  this  time  it 
proceeded  from  a  quarter  much  nearer  them.  All 
four  listeners  held  their  breath.  Presently  the  Italian 
made  a  terrified  gesture  and  pointed  frantically  to 
the  right  bank  of  the  lake. 

"I  see  her!"  she  cried,  "I  see  her!  She  is  coming 
towards  us!" 

The  frightened  girl  made  a  movement  as  if  she 
would  break  away  from  her  companion  and  flee  into 
the  darkness  of  the  trees. 

Gladys  clasped  her  firmly  in  her  arms. 

"No  —  no!"  she  said,  "no  running  off!    Remember 


270  WOOD  AND   STONE 


our  agreement!  There's  nothing  really  to  be  afraid 
of.     I'm  not  afraid." 

A  slight  quiver  in  her  voice  a  little  belied  the  calm- 
ness of  this  statement.  She  was  indeed  torn  at  that 
moment  between  a  very  natural  desire  to  escape 
herself  and  an  insatiable  craving  to  prolong  her 
companion's  agitation. 

In  her  convulsive  terror  the  Italian,  unable  to  free 
herself  from  the  elder  girl's  enfolding  arms,  buried 
her  head  in  the  other's  cloak. 

Thus  linked,  the  two  might  have  posed  for  a  pic- 
ture of  heroic  sisterly  solicitude,  in  the  presence  of 
extreme  danger. 

Once  more  that  ghastly  cry  resounded  through  the 
silence;  and  several  nocturnal  birds,  from  distant  por- 
tions of  the  wood,  replied  to  it  with  their  melancholy 
hootings. 

The  white-garbed  figure  of  the  mad  girl,  her  arms 
tossed  tragically  above  her  head,  came  swaying 
towards  them.  She  moved  unevenly,  and  staggered 
in  her  advance,  as  if  her  volition  had  not  complete 
power  over  her  movements.  Gladys  was  evidently 
considerably  alarmed  herself  now.  She  clutched  at 
a  chance  of  combining  escape  with  triumph. 

"Say  you  let  me  off  that  promise!"  she  whispered 
hoarsely,  "and  we'll  run  together!  We'i:e  quite 
close  to  the  way  out." 

Who  can  read  the  obscure  recesses  of  the  human 
mind,  or  gauge  the  supernatural  strength  that  lurks 
amid  the  frailest  nerves? 

This  reference  to  her  sublime  contract  was  the  one 
thing  needed  to  rouse  the  abandoned  soul  of  the 
Pariah.      For   one   brief   second   more  the  powers   of 


AUBER  LAKE  271 

darkness  struggled  over  her  bowed  head  with  the 
powers  of  light. 

Then  with  a  desperate  movement  the  Italian  rose 
erect,  flung  aside  her  cousin's  arms,  turned  boldly 
towards  the  approaching  maniac,  and  ran  straight  to 
meet  her.  Her  unexpected  appearance  produced 
an  immediate  effect  upon  the  unhappy  girl.  Her 
wildly-tossing  arms  fell  to  her  side.  Her  wailing 
died  away  in  pathetic  sobs,  and  these  also  quickly 
ceased. 

Lacrima  seemed  to  act  like  one  possessed  of  some 
invincible  magic.  One  might  have  dreamed  that  now 
for  the  first  time  for  uncounted  ages  this  unholy 
shrine  of  heathen  tradition  was  invaded  by  an  emis- 
sary of  the  true  Faith. 

Gladys,  who  had  reeled  bewildered  against  the  wood- 
work of  an  ancient  weir,  that  formed  the  outlet  to 
the  lake,  leaned  in  complete  prostration  of  astonish- 
ment upon  this  support,  and  gazed  helplessly  and 
dumbly  at  the  two  figures.  She  was  too  petrified 
with  amazement  to  notice  the  appearance  of  Ralph 
and  Maurice,  who,  also  absorbed  in  watching  this 
strange  encounter,  had  half-emerged  from  their 
concealment. 

The  three  onlookers  saw  the  Italian  lay  her  hands 
upon  the  girl's  forehead,  smooth  back  her  hair,  kiss 
her  gently  on  the  brow,  and  fling  her  own  cloak  over 
her  bare  shoulders.  They  heard  her  murmuring 
again  and  again  some  soft  repetition  of  soothing 
w^ords.  Dangelis  caught  the  liquid  syllables  of  the 
Tuscan  tongue.  Evidently  in  her  excitement  the 
child  of  Genoa  the  Superb  had  reverted  to  the  lan- 
guage of  her  fathers. 


272  WOOD  AND   STONE 

The  next  thing  they  saw  was  the  slow  retreat  of  the 
two  together,  towards  the  keeper's  cottage;  the  arm 
of  the  Italian  clinging  tenderly  round  the  maniac's 
waist. 

At  this  point  Dangelis  stepped  forward  and  made 
himself  known  to  Gladys. 

The  expression  on  the  face  of  Mr.  Romer's 
daughter,  when  she  recognized  the  American,  was  a 
palimpsest  of  conflicting  emotions.  Her  surprise  was 
still  more  intense  when  Mr.  Quincunx  stepped  out 
from  the  shadow  of  the  drooping  tree  and  raised  his 
hat  to  her.  Her  eyes  for  the  moment  looked  posi- 
tively scared;  and  her  mouth  opened,  like  the  mouth 
of  a  bewildered  infant.  The  tone  with  which  the 
citizen  of  Ohio  addressed  the  confused  young  lady 
made  the  heart  of  Mr.  Quincunx  leap  for  joy. 

"I  am  astonished  at  you,"  he  said.  "I  should  not 
have  believed  such  a  thing  possible!  Your  only  excuse 
is  that  this  infernal  jest  of  yours  has  turned  out  so 
well  for  the  people  concerned,  and  so  shamefully  for 
yourself.  How  could  you  treat  that  brave  foreign 
child  so  brutally?  Why  —  I  saw  her  trembling  and 
trembling,  and  trying  to  get  away;  and  you  were 
holding  —  actually  holding  her  —  while  that  poor 
mad  thing  came  nearer!  It's  a  good  thing  for  you 
that  the  Catholic  spirit  in  her  burst  out  at  last.  Do 
you  know  what  spell  she  used  to  bring  that  girl  to 
her  senses?  A  spell  that  you  will  never  understand, 
my  friend,  for  all  this  baptism  and  confirmation 
business!  Why  —  she  quoted  passages  out  of  the 
Litany  of  Our  Lady!  I  heard  her  clearly,  and  I  recog- 
nized the  words.  I  am  a  damned  atheist  myself, 
but  if  ever  I  felt  religion  to  be  justified  it  was  when 


AUBER  LAKE  273 

your  cousin  stopped  that  girl's  crying.  It  was  like 
real  magic.  You  ought  to  be  thoroughly  proud  of 
her!  I  shall  tell  her  when  I  see  her  what  I  feel  about 
her." 

Gladys  rose  from  her  seat  on  the  weir  and  faced 
them  haughtily.  Her  surprise  once  over,  and  the 
rebuke  having  fallen,  she  became  mistress  of  herself 
again. 

"I  suppose,"  she  said,  completely  ignoring  Mr.  Quin- 
cunx, "we'd  better  follow  those  two,  and  see  if  La- 
crima  gets  her  safely  into  the  house.  I  fancy  she'll 
have  no  difficulty  about  it.  Of  course  if  she  had  not 
done  this  I  should  have  had  to  do  it  myself.  But 
not  knowing  Italian"  —  she  added  this  with  a  sneer 
—  "I  am  not  so  suitable  a  mad-house  nurse," 

"It  was  her  good  heart,  Gladys,"  responded  the 
American;  "not  her  Italian,  nor  her  Litany,  that 
soothed  that  girl's  mind.  I  wish  your  heart,  my 
friend,  were  half  as  good." 

"Well,"  returned  the  fair  girl  quite  cheerfully, 
"we'll  leave  my  heart  for  the  present,  and  see  how 
Lacrima  has  got  on." 

She  took  the  arm  which  Dangelis  had  not  offered, 
but  which  his  chivalry  forbade  him  to  refuse,  and 
together  they  proceeded  to  follow  the  heroic  Genoese. 

Mr.  Quincunx  shuffled  unregarded  behind  them. 

They  had  hardly  reached  the  keeper's  cottage,  a 
desolate  and  ancient  erection,  of  the  usual  stone 
material,  darkened  with  damp  and  overshadowed  by 
a  moss-grown  oak,  when  Lacrima  herself  came  towards 
them. 

She  started  with  surprise  at  seeing,  in  the  shadowy 
obscurity,  the  figures  of  the  two  men. 


274  WOOD   AND   STONE 

Her  surprise  changed  to  pleasure  when  she  recog- 
nized their  identity. 

"Ah!"  she  said.  "You  come  too  late.  Gladys 
and  I  have  had  quite  an  adventure,  haven't  we, 
cousin.'' 

Mr.  Quincunx  glanced  at  the  American  to  see  if  he 
embraced  the  full  generosity  of  the  turn  she  gave  to 
the  situation. 

Gladys  took  advantage  of  it  in  a  moment.  "You 
see  I  was  right  after  all,"  she  remarked.  "I  knew 
you  would  lose  your  alarm  directly  you  saw  that 
girl!  When  it  came  to  the  point  you  were  braver 
than  I.  You  dear  thing!"  She  kissed  the  Italian 
ostentatiously,  and  then  retook  possession  of  her 
admirer's  arm. 

"I  got  her  up  to  her  room  without  waking  her 
father,"  said  Lacrima.  "She  had  left  the  door  wide 
open.  Gladys  is  going  to  ask  Mr.  Romer  to  have  her 
sent  away  to  some  sort  of  home.  I  believe  they'll 
be  able  to  cure  her.  She  talked  quite  sensibly  to 
me.  I  am  sure  she  only  wants  to  be  treated  gently. 
I'm  afraid  her  father's  unkind  to  her.  You  are  going 
to  arrange  for  her  being  sent  away,  aren't  you, 
Gladys?" 

The  elder  girl  turned.  "Of  course,  my  dear,  of 
course.     I  don't  go  back  on  my  word." 

The  four  friends  proceeded  to  take  the  nearest 
path  through  the  wood.  One  by  one  the  frightened 
wild-geese  returned  to  their  roosting-place  on  the 
island.  The  water-rats  resumed  uninterrupted  their 
night-prowls  along  the  reedy  edge  of  the  lake,  and 
the  wood-pigeons  settled  down  in  peace  upon  their 
high  branches. 


AUBER  LAKE  275 

Long  before  Dead  Man's  Lane  was  reached  the 
two  couples  had  drifted  conveniently  apart  in  their 
lingering  return. 

Mr.  Quincunx  had  seldom  been  more  tender 
towards  his  little  friend  than  he  was  that  night;  and 
I^acrima,  still  strangely  happy  in  the  after-ebb  of  her 
supernatural  exultation,  nestled  closely  to  his  side  as 
they  drifted  leisurely  across  the  fields. 

In  what  precise  manner  the  deeply-betrayed  Gladys 
regained  the  confidence  of  her  lover  need  not  be 
related.  The  artist  from  Ohio  would  have  been  ada- 
mantine indeed,  could  he  have  resisted  the  appeal 
which  the  amorous  telepathy  of  this  magnetic  young 
person  gave  her  the  power  of  expressing. 

Meanwhile,  in  her  low-pitched  room,  with  the 
shadow  of  the  oak-tree  coming  and  going  across  her 
face,  as  the  moonlight  shone  out  or  faded,  Nance 
Purvis  lay  placidly  asleep,  dreaming  no  more  of 
strange  phantoms  or  of  stinging  whips,  but  of  gentle 
spirits  from  some  translunar  region,  who  caressed  her 
forehead  with  hands  softer  than  moth's  wings  and 
spoke  to  her  in  a  tongue  that  was  like  the  moonlight 
itself  made  audible. 


CHAPTER   XIII 

LACRIMA 

MR.  JOHN  GORING  was  feeding  his  rabbits. 
In  the  gross  texture  of  his  clayish  nature 
there  were  one  or  two  curious  layers  of  a 
pleasanter  material.  One  of  these,  for  instance,  was 
now  shown  in  the  friendly  equanimity  with  which  he 
permitted  a  round-headed  awkward  youth,  more  than 
half  idiotic,  to  assist  him  at  this  innocent  task. 

Between  Mr.  Goring  and  Bert  Leerd  there  existed 
one  of  those  inexplicable  friendships,  which  so  often, 
to  the  bewilderment  of  moral  philosophers,  bring  a 
twilight  of  humanity  into  the  most  sinister  mental 
caves.  The  farmer  had  saved  this  youth  from  a  con- 
spiracy of  Poor-Law  oflBcials  who  were  on  the  point 
of  consigning  him  to  an  asylum.  He  had  assumed 
responsibility  for  his  good-behaviour  and  had  given 
him  a  lodging  —  his  parents  being  both  dead  —  in  the 
Priory  itself. 

Not  a  few  young  servant-girls,  selected  by  Mr. 
Goring  rather  for  their  appearance  than  their  dispo- 
sition, had  been  dismissed  from  his  service,  after 
violent  and  wrathful  scenes,  for  being  caught  teasing 
this  unfortunate;  and  even  the  cook,  a  female  of  the 
most  taciturn  and  sombre  temper,  was  compelled  to 
treat  him  with  comparative  consideration.  The  gos- 
sips of  Nevilton  swore,  as  one  may  believe,  that  the 
farmer,  in  being  kind  to  this  boy,  was  only  obeying 


LACRIMA  277 


the  mandate  of  nature;  but  no  one  who  had  ever 
beheld  Bert's  mother,  gave  the  least  credence  to  such 
a  story. 

Another  of  Mr.  Goring's  softer  aspects  was  his 
mania  for  tame  rabbits.  These  he  kept  in  commodi- 
ous and  spacious  hutches  at  the  back  of  his  house, 
and  every  year  wonderful  and  interesting  additions 
were  added  to  their  number. 

On  this  particular  morning  both  the  farmer  and 
his  idiot  were  absorbed  and  rapt  in  contemplation  be- 
fore the  gambols  of  two  large  new  pets  —  great  silky 
lop-eared  things  —  who  had  arrived  the  night  before. 
Mr.  Goring  was  feeding  them  with  fresh  lettuces, 
carefully  handed  to  him  by  his  assistant,  who  divested 
these  plants  of  their  rough  outer  leaves  and  dried 
them  on  the  palms  of  his  hands. 

"The  little  'un  do  lap  'em  up  fastest,  master," 
remarked  the  boy.  "I  mind  how  those  others,  with 
them  girt  ears,  did  love  a  fresh  lettuce." 

Mr.  Goring  watched  with  mute  satisfaction  the 
quivering  nostrils  and  nibbling  mouth  of  the  dainty 
voracious  creature. 

"Mustn't  let  them  have  more  than  three  at  a 
time,  Bert,"  he  remarked.  "But  they  do  love  them, 
as  you  say." 

"What  be  going  to  call  this  little  'un,  master?" 
asked  the  boy. 

Mr.  Goring  straightened  his  back  and  drew  a  deep 
breath. 

"What  do  you  think,  Bert,  my  boy?"  he  cried,  in 
a  husky  excited  tone,  prodding  his  assistant  jocosely 
with  the  handle  of  his  riding- whip;  "what  do  you 
think?     What  would  you  call  her?" 


278  \YOOD   AND   STOXE 

"Ah!  I  knew  she  were  a  she,  master!"  chuckled 
the  idiot.  "I  knew  that,  afore  she  were  out  of  the 
packer-case!  Call  'er?"  and  the  boy  leered  an  inde- 
scribable leer.  "By  gum!  I  can  tell  'ee  that  fast 
enough.  Call  'er  Missy  Lacrima,  pretty  little  Missy 
Lacrima,  wot  lives  up  at  the  House,  and  wot  is  going 
to  be  missus  'ere  afore  long." 

Mr.  Goring  surveyed  his  protege  for  a  moment 
with  sublime  contentment,  and  then  humorously 
flicked  at  his  ears  with  his  whip. 

"Right!  my  imp  of  Satan.  Right!  my  spawn  of 
Belial.     That  is  just  what  I  was  thinking." 

"She  be  silky  and  soft  to  handle,"  went  on  the 
idiot,  "and  her,  up  at  the  House,  be  no  contrary, 
or  I'm  darned  mistaken." 

Mr.  Goring  expressed  his  satisfaction  at  his  friend's 
intelligence  by  giving  him  a  push  that  nearly  threw 
him  backwards. 

"And  I'll  tell  you  this,  my  boy,"  he  remarked  confi- 
dentially, surveying  the  long  line  of  well-filled  hutches, 
"we've  never  yet  bought  such  a  rabbit,  as  this  foreign 
one  will  turn  out,   or  you  and  I  be  damned  fools." 

"The  young  lady'll  get  mighty  fond  of  these  'ere 
long-ears,  looks  so  to  me,"  observed  the  youth.  "Hope 
she  won't  be  a  feeding  'em  wuth  wet  cabbage,  same 
as  maids  most  often  do." 

The  farmer  grew  even  more  confidential,  drawing 
close  to  his  assistant  and  addressing  him  in  the  tone 
customary  with  him  on  market-days,  when  feeling 
the  ribs  of  fatted  cattle. 

"That  same  young  lady  is  coming  up  here  this 
morning,  Bert,"  he  remarked  significantly.  "The 
squire's  giving  her  a  note  to  bring  along." 


LACRIMA  279 


"And  you  be  going  to  bring  matters  to  a  head, 
master,"  rejoined  the  boy.  "That's  wise  and  thought- 
ful of  'ee,  choosing  time,  like,  and  season,  as  the  Book 
says.  Maids  be  wonderful  sly  when  the  sun's  down, 
while  of  mornings  they  be  meek  as  guinea-fowls." 

The  appearance  of  the  Priory  servant  —  no  very 
demure  figure  —  put  a  sudden  stop  to  these  touching 
confidences. 

"Miss  Lacrima,  with  a  note,  in  the  front  Parlour!" 
the  damsel  shouted. 

"You  needn't  call  so  loud,  girl,"  grumbled  the 
farmer.  "And  how  often  must  I  tell  you  to  say 
'Miss  Traffio,'  not  'Miss  Lacrima'.?" 

The  girl  tossed  her  head  and  pouted  her  lips. 

"A  person  isn't  used  to  waiting  on  foreigners,"  she 
muttered. 

Mr.  Goring's  only  reply  to  this  remark  was  to 
pinch  her  arm  unmercifully.  He  then  pushed  her 
aside,  and  entering  the  kitchen,  walked  rapidly 
through  to  the  front  of  the  house.  The  front  parlour 
in  the  Priory  was  nothing  more  or  less  than  the  old 
entrance-gate  of  the  Cistercian  Monastery,  preserved 
through  four  centuries,  with  hardly  a  change. 

The  roof  was  high  and  vaulted.  In  the  centre  of 
the  vault  a  great  many-petalled  rose,  carved  in 
Leonian  stone,  seemed  to  gather  all  the  curves  and 
lines  of  the  masonry  together,  and  hold  them  in 
religious  concentration. 

The  fire-place  —  a  thing  of  more  recent,  but  still 
sufficiently  ancient  date  —  displayed  the  delicate  and 
gracious  fantasy  of  some  local  Jacobean  artist,  who 
had  lavished  upon  its  ornate  mouldings  a  more  per- 
sonal feeling  than  one  is  usually  aware  of  in  these 


280  WOOD   AXD   STOXE 

things.  In  place  of  a  fire  the  wide  grate  was,  at  this 
moment,  full  of  new-grown  bracken  fronds,  evidently 
recently  picked,  for  they  were  still  fresh  and  green. 

In  front  of  the  fire-place  stood  Lacrima  with  the 
letter  in  her  hand.  Had  Mr.  Goring  been  a  little  less 
persuaded  of  the  "meekness"  of  this  young  person, 
he  would  have  recognized  something  not  altogether 
friendly  to  himself  and  his  plans  in  the  strained  white 
face  she  raised  to  him  and  the  stiff  gloved  hand  she 
extended. 

He  begged  her  to  be  seated.  She  waved  aside  the 
chair  he  offered,  and  handed  him  the  letter.  He  tore 
this  open  and  glanced  carelessly  at  its  contents. 

The  letter  was  indeed  brief  enough,  containing 
nothing  but  the  following  gnomic  words:  "Refusal 
or  no  refusal,"  signed  with  an  imperial  flourish. 

He  flung  it  down  on  the  table,  and  came  to  business 
at  once. 

"You  mustn't  let  that  little  mistake  of  Auber 
Great  Meadow  mean  anything,  missie,"  he  said. 
"You  were  too  hasty  with  a  fellow  that  time  —  too 
hasty  and  coy-like.  Those  be  queer  maids'  tricks, 
that  crying  and  running!  But,  bless  my  heart! 
I  don't  bear  you  any  grudge  for  it.  You  needn't 
think  it." 

He  advanced  a  step  —  while  she  retreated,  very 
pale  and  very  calm,  her  little  fingers  clasped  nervously 
together.  She  managed  to  keep  the  table  between 
them,  so  that,  barring  a  grotesque  and  obvious  pur- 
suit of  her,  she  was  well  out  of  his  reach. 

"I  have  a  plain  and  simple  offer  to  make  to  you, 
my  dear,"  he  continued,  "and  it  is  one  that  can  do 
you  no  hurt  or  shame.     I  am  not  one  of  those  who 


LACRIMA  281 


waste  words  in  courting  a  girl,  least  of  all  a  young 
lady  of  education  like  yourself.  The  fact  is,  I  am 
a  lonely  man  —  without  wife  or  child  —  and  as  far 
as  I  know  no  relations  on  earth,  except  brother 
Mortimer.  And  I  have  a  pretty  tidy  sum  laid  up  in 
Yeoborough  Bank,  and  the  farm  is  a  good  farm.  I 
do  not  say  that  the  house  is  all  that  could  be  wished; 
but  'tis  a  pretty  house,  too,  and  one  that  could  stand 
improvement.  In  plain  words,  dearie,  what  I  want 
you  to  say  now  is  'yes,'  and  no  nonsense,  —  for  what 
I  am  doing,"  his  voice  became  quite  husky  at  this 
point,  as  if  her  propinquity  really  did  cause  him  some 
emotion,  "is  asking  you,  point-blank,  and  no  beating 
about  the  bush,  whether  you  will  marry  me!" 

Lacrima's  face  during  this  long  harangue  would 
have  formed  a  strange  picture  for  any  old  Cister- 
cian monk  shadowing  that  ancient  room.  At  first  she 
had  kept  unmoved  her  strained  and  tensely-strung 
impassivity.  But  by  degrees,  as  the  astounding 
character  of  the  man's  communication  began  to  dawn 
upon  her,  her  look  changed  into  one  of  sheer  blind 
terror.  When  the  final  fatal  word  crossed  the 
farmer's  lips,  she  put  her  hand  to  her  throat  as  though 
to  suppress  an  actual  cry.  She  had  never  looked 
for  this;  —  not  in  her  wildest  dreams  of  what  destiny, 
in  this  curst  place,  could  inflict  upon  her.  This 
surpassed  the  worst  of  possible  imagination!  It  was 
a  deep  below  the  deep.  She  found  herself  at  first 
completely  unable  to  utter  a  word.  She  could  only 
make  a  vague  helpless  gesture  with  her  hand  as 
though  durably  waving  the  whole  world  away. 

Then  at  last  with  a  terrible  effort  she  broke  the 
silence. 


28^2  WOOD   AND   STONE 

"What  you  say  is  utterly  —  utterly  impossible! 
It  is  —  it  is  too  — " 

She  could  not  go  on.  But  she  had  said  enough  to 
carry,  even  to  a  brain  composed  of  pure  clay,  the 
conviction  that  the  acquiescence  he  demanded  was 
not  a  thing  to  be  easily  won.  He  thought  of  his 
brother-in-law's  enigmatic  note.  Possibly  the  owner 
of  Leo's  Hill  had  ways  of  persuading  recalcitrant 
foreign  girls  that  were  quite  hidden  from  him.  The 
psychological  irony  of  the  thing  lay  in  the  fact  that 
in  proportion  as  her  terror  increased,  his  desire  for 
her  increased  proportionally.  Had  she  been  willing,  — 
had  she  been  even  passive  and  indifferent, — the  curi- 
ous temperament  of  Mr.  Goring  would  have  been 
scarcely  stirred.  He  might  have  gone  on  pursuing 
her,  out  of  spite  or  out  of  obstinacy;  but  the  pursuit 
would  have  been  no  more  than  an  interlude,  a  dis- 
traction, among  his  other  affairs. 

But  that  look  of  absolute  terror  on  her  face  —  the 
look  of  a  hunted  animal  under  the  hot  breath  of  the 
hounds  —  appealed  to  something  profoundly  deep  in 
his  nature.  Oddly  enough  —  such  are  the  eccen- 
tricities of  the  human  mind  —  the  very  craving  to 
possess  her  which  her  terror  excited,  was  accompanied 
by  a  rush  of  extraordinary  pity  for  himself  as  the 
object  of  her  distaste. 

He  let  her  pass  —  making  no  movement  to  inter- 
rupt her  escape.  He  let  her  hurry  out  of  the  garden 
and  into  the  road  —  without  a  word;  but  as  soon  as 
she  was  gone,  he  sat  down  on  the  wooden  seat  under 
the  front  of  the  house  and  resting  his  head  upon  his 
chin  began  blubbering  like  a  great  baby.  Big  salt 
tears  fell  from  his  small  pig's  eyes,  rolled  down  his 


LACRIMA  283 


tanned  cheeks,  and  falling  upon  the  dust  caked  it 
into  Uttle  curious  globules. 

Two  wandering  ants  of  a  yellowish  species,  dragging 
prisoner  after  them  one  of  a  black  kind,  encountered 
these  minute  globes  of  sand  and  sorrow,  and  explored 
them  with  interrogatory  feelers. 

Mingled  with  this  feeling  of  pity  for  himself  under 
the  girl's  disdain  was  a  remarkable  wave  of  immense 
tenderness  and  consideration  for  her.  Short  of  letting 
her  escape  him,  how  delicately  he  would  cherish,  how 
tenderly  he  would  pet  and  fondle  her,  how  assiduously 
he  would  care  for  her!  The  consciousness  of  this 
emotion  of  soft  tenderness  towards  the  girl  increased 
his  pity  for  himself  under  the  weight  of  the  girl's 
contempt.  How  ungrateful  she  was!  And  yet  that 
very  look  of  terror,  that  stifled  cry  of  the  hunted 
hare,  which  made  him  so  resolved  to  win  her,  pro- 
duced in  him  an  exquisite  feeling  of  melting  regard 
for  her  youth,  her  softness,  her  fragility.  When  she 
did  belong  to  him,  oh  how  tenderly  he  would  treat 
her!  How  he  would  humour  her  and  give  her  every- 
thing she  could  want! 

The  shadowy  Cistercian  monks  would  no  doubt, 
from  their  clairvoyant  catholic  knowledge  of  the 
subtleties  of  the  human  soul,  have  quite  understood 
the  cause  of  those  absurd  tears  caking  the  dust  under 
that  wooden  seat.  But  the  yellowish  ants  continued 
to  be  very  perplexed  and  confused  by  their  presence. 
Thunder-drops  tasting  of  salt  were  no  doubt  as 
strange  to  them  as  hail-stones  tasting  of  wine  would 
have  been  to  Mr,  Goring.  But  the  ants  were  not  the 
only  creatures  amazed  at  this  new  development  in 
the  psychology  of  the  man  of  clay.     From  one  corner 


284  WOOD   AND   STONE 

of  the  house  peeped  the  servant-girl,  full  of  tremulous 
curiosity,  and  from  another  the  idiot  Bert  shuffled 
and  spied,  full  of  most  anxious  and  perturbed  concern. 

Meanwhile  the  innocent  cause  of  this  little  drama 
was  making  her  way  with  drooping  head  and  drag- 
ging steps  down  the  south  drive.  When  she  reached 
the  house  she  was  immediately  informed  by  one  of 
the  servants  that  Mr.  Romer  wished  to  see  her  in  the 
study. 

She  was  so  dazed  and  broken,  so  forlorn  and  indif- 
ferent, that  she  made  her  way  straight  to  this  room 
without  pause  or  question. 

She  found  Mr.  Romer  in  a  most  lively  and  affable 
mood.  He  made  her  sit  down  opposite  him,  and 
handed  her  chocolates  out  of  a  decorative  Parisian 
box  which  lay  on  the  table. 

"Well,  young  lady,"  he  said,  "I  know,  without 
your  telling  me,  that  an  important  event  has  oc- 
curred! Indeed,  to  confess  the  truth,  I  have,  for  a 
long  time,  foreseen  its  occurrence.  And  what  did  you 
answer  to  my  worthy  brother's  flattering  proposal?  It 
isn't  every  girl,  in  your  peculiar  position,  who  is  as 
lucky  as  this.  Come  —  don't  be  shy!  There  is  no 
need  for  shyness  with  me.  What  did  you  say  to 
him?" 

Lacrima  looked  straight  in  front  of  her  out  of  the 
window.  She  saw  the  waving  branches  of  a  great 
dark  yew-tree  and  above  it  the  white  clouds.  She 
felt  like  one  whose  guardian-angel  has  deserted  her, 
leaving  her  the  prey  of  blind  elemental  forces. 
She  thought  vaguely  in  her  mind  that  she  would 
make  a  desperate  appeal  to  Vennie  Seldom.  Some- 
thing in  Vennie  gave  her  a  consciousness  of  strength. 


LACRIMA  285 


To  this  strength,  at  the  worst,  she  would  cling  for 
help.  She  was  thus  in  a  measure  fortified  in  advance 
against  any  outburst  in  which  her  employer  might 
indulge.     But  Mr.  Romer  indulged  in  no  outburst. 

"I  suppose,"  he  said  calmly,  "that  I  may  take  for 
granted  that  you  have  refused  my  good  brother's 
offer.''" 

Lacrima  nodded,  without  speaking. 

"That  is  quite  what  I  expected.  You  would  not 
be  yourself  if  you  had  not  done  so.  And  since  you 
have  done  so  it  is  of  course  quite  impossible  for  me 
to  put  any  pressure  upon  you." 

He  paused  and  carefully  selecting  the  special  kind 
of  chocolate  that  appealed  to  him  put  it  deliberately 
in  his  mouth. 

Lacrima  was  so  amazed  at  the  mild  tone  he  used 
and  at  the  drift  of  his  words,  that  she  turned  full 
upon  him  her  large  liquid  eyes  with  an  expression 
in  them  of  something  almost  like  gratitude.  The  cor- 
ners of  her  mouth  twitched.  The  reaction  was  too 
great.     She  felt  she  could  not  keep  back  her  tears. 

Mr.  Romer  quietly  continued. 

"In  all  these  things,  my  dear  young  lady,  the  world 
presents  itself  as  a  series  of  bargains  and  com- 
promises. My  brother  has  made  you  his  offer  — 
a  flattering  and  suitable  one.  In  the  girlish  excite- 
ment of  the  first  shock  you  have  totally  refused  to 
listen  to  him.  But  the  world  moves  round.  Such 
natural  moods  do  not  last  forever.  They  often  do 
not  last  beyond  the  next  day!  In  order  to  help  you 
—  to  make  it  easier  for  you  —  to  bring  such  a  mood 
to  an  end,  I  also,  in  my  turn,  have  a  little  proposal 
to  make." 


280  WOOD   AND   STOXE 

Lacrima's  expression  changed  with  terrible  rapidity; 
she  stared  at  him  panic-stricken. 

"My  proposal  is  this,"  said  Mr.  Romer,  quietly 
handing  her  the  box  of  chocolates,  and  smiling  as  she 
waved  it  away.  "As  I  said  just  now,  the  world  is  a 
place  of  bargains  and  compromises.  Nothing  ever 
occurs  between  human  beings  which  is  not  the  result 
of  some  unuttered  transaction  of  occult  diplomacy. 
Led  by  your  instincts  you  reject  my  brother's  offer. 
Led  by  my  instincts  I  offer  you  the  following  per- 
suasion to  overcome  your  refusal." 

He  placed  another  chocolate  in  his  mouth. 

"I  know  wxll,"  he  went  on,  "your  regard  and  fond- 
ness —  I  might  use  even  stronger  words  —  for  our 
friend  Maurice  Quincunx.  Now  what  I  propose  is 
this.  I  will  settle  upon  Maurice,  —  you  shall  see 
the  draft  itself  and  my  signature  upon  it,  —  an  income 
suflficient  to  enable  him  to  live  comfortably  and  hap- 
pily, wherever  he  pleases,  without  doing  a  stroke  of 
work,  and  without  the  least  anxiety.  I  will  arrange 
it  so  that  he  cannot  touch  the  capital  of  the  sum 
I  make  over  to  him,  and  has  nothing  to  do  but  to 
sign  receipts  for  each  quarter's  dividend,  as  the  bank 
makes  them  over  to  him. 

"The  sum  I  will  give  him  will  be  so  considerable, 
that  the  income  from  it  will  amount  to  not  less  than 
three  hundred  pounds  a  year.  With  this  at  his  dis- 
posal he  will  be  able  to  live  wherever  he  likes,  either 
here  or  elsewhere.  And  what  is  more,"  —  here  Mr. 
Romer  looked  intently  and  significantly  at  the  trem- 
bling girl  —  "what  is  more,  he  will  be  in  a  position 
to  marry  whenever  he  may  desire  to  do  so.  I  believe" 
—  he  could  not  refrain  from  a  tone  of  sardonic  irony 


LACRIMA  287 


as  he  added  this  —  "that  you  have  found  him  not 
particularly  well  able  to  look  after  himself.  I  shall 
sign  this  document,  rendering  your  friend  free  from 
financial  anxiety  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  on  the  day 
when  you  are  married  to  Mr.  Goring." 

When  he  had  finished  speaking  Lacrima  continued 
to  stare  at  him  with  a  wide  horror-struck  gaze. 

Mechanically  she  noticed  the  peculiar  way  in 
which  his  eyebrows  met  one  another  across  a  scar 
on  his  forehead.  This  scar  and  the  little  grey  bristles 
that  crossed  it  remained  in  her  mind  long  afterwards, 
indelibly  associated  with  the  thoughts  that  then 
passed  through  her  brain.  Chief  among  these  thoughts 
was  a  deep-lurking,  heart-clutching  dread  of  her  own 
conscience,  and  a  terrible  shapeless  fear  that  this  sub- 
terranean conscience  might  debar  her  from  the  right 
to  make  her  appeal  to  Vennie.  From  Mr.  Romer's  per- 
secution she  could  appeal;  but  how  could  she  appeal 
against  his  benevolence  to  her  friend,  even  though  the 
path    of    that    benevolence    lay   over    her    own  body.'* 

She  rose  from  her  seat,  too  troubled  and  confused 
even  to  hate  the  man  who  thus  played  the  part  of 
an  ironic  Providence. 

"Let  me  go,"  she  said,  waving  aside  once  more  the 
bright-coloured  box  of  chocolates  which  he  had  the 
diabolical  effrontery  to  offer  her  again.  "Let  me  go. 
I  want  to  be  alone.     I  want  to  think." 

He  opened  the  door  for  her,  and  she  passed  out. 
Once  out  of  his  presence  she  rushed  madly  upstairs 
to  her  own  room,  flung  herself  on  the  bed,  and  re- 
mained, for  what  seemed  to  her  like  centuries  of 
horror,  without  movement  and  without  tears,  staring 
up  at  the  ceiling. 


288  WOOD  AND   STONE 

The  luncheon  bell  sounded,  but  she  did  not  heed 
it.  From  the  open  window  floated  in  the  smell  of 
the  white  cluster-roses,  scented  like  old  wine,  which 
encircled  the  terrace  pillars.  Blending  with  this 
fragrance  came  the  interminable  voice  of  the  wood- 
pigeons,  and  every  now  and  then  a  sharp  wild  cry, 
from  the  peacocks  on  the  east  lawn.  Two  —  three 
hours  passed  thus,  and  still  she  did  not  move.  A 
certain  queer-shaped  crack  above  the  door  occupied 
her  superficial  attention,  very  much  in  the  same  way 
as  the  scar  on  Mr.  Romer's  forehead.  Any  very 
precise  formulation  of  her  thoughts  during  this  long 
period  would  be  difficult  to  state. 

Her  mind  had  fallen  into  that  confused  and  feverish 
bewilderment  that  comes  to  us  in  hours  between 
sleeping  and  waking.  The  clearest  image  that  shaped 
itself  to  her  consciousness  during  these  hours  was  the 
image  of  herself  as  dead,  and,  by  means  of  her  death, 
of  Maurice  Quincunx  being  freed  from  his  hated 
office-work,  and  enabled  to  live  according  to  his 
pleasure.  She  saw  him  walking  to  and  fro  among 
rows  of  evening  primroses  —  his  favourite  flowers  — 
and  in  place  of  a  cabbage-leaf  —  so  fantastic  were  her 
dreams  —  she  saw  his  heavy  head  ornamented  with 
a  broad,  new  Panama-hat,  purchased  with  the  price 
of  her  death. 

Her  mind  gave  no  definite  shape  or  form  to  this 
image  of  herself  dying.  The  thought  of  it  followed 
so  naturally  from  the  idea  of  a  union  with  the 
Priory-tenant,  that  there  seemed  no  need  to  separate 
the  two  things.  To  marry  Mr.  John  Goring  was  just 
a  simple  sentence  of  death.  The  only  thing  to  make 
sure    of,    was    that    before    she    actually    died,    this 


LACRIMA  289 


precious  document,  liberating  her  friend  forever, 
should  be  signed  and  sealed.  Oddly  enough  she  never 
for  a  moment  doubted  Mr.  Romer's  intention  of  carry- 
ing out  his  part  of  the  contract  if  she  carried  out  hers. 
As  he  had  said,  the  world  was  designed  and  arranged 
for  bargains  between  men  and  women;  and  if  her 
great  bargain  meant  the  putting  of  life  itself  into 
the  scale  —  well!    she  was  ready. 

Strangely  enough,  the  final  issue  of  her  feverish 
self-communings  was  a  sense  of  deep  and  indescribable 
peace.  It  was  more  of  a  relief  to  her  than  anyone 
not  acquainted  with  the  peculiar  texture  of  a  Pariah's 
mind  could  realize,  to  be  spared  that  desperate  appeal 
to  Vennie  Seldom.  In  a  dumb  inarticulate  way  she 
felt  that,  without  making  such  an  appeal,  the  spirit 
of  the  Nevilton  nun  was  supporting  and  strengthen- 
ing her.  Did  Vennie  know  of  her  dilemma,  she  would 
be  compelled  to  resort  to  some  drastic  step  to  stop 
the  sacrifice,  just  as  one  would  be  compelled  to  hold 
out  a  hand  of  rescue  to  some  determined  suicide.  But 
she  felt  in  the  depths  of  her  heart  that  if  Vennie 
were  in  her  position  she  would  make  the  same 
choice. 

The  long  afternoon  was  still  only  half  over,  when  — 
comforted  and  at  peace  with  herself,  as  a  devoted 
patriot  might  be  at  peace,  when  the  throw  of  the 
dice  has  appointed  him  as  his  country's  liberator  — 
she  rose  from  her  recumbent  position,  and  sitting  on 
the  edge  of  her  bed  turned  over  the  pages  of  her 
tiny  edition  of  St.  Thomas  a  Kempis. 

It  had  been  long  since  she  had  opened  this  volume. 
Indeed,  isolated  from  contact  with  any  Catholic 
influence  except  that  of  the  philosophical  Mr.  Taxater, 


290  ^YOOD   AND   STONE 


Lacrima  had  been  recently  drifting  rather  far  away 
from  the  church  of  her  fathers.  This  complete  up- 
heaval of  her  whole  life  threw  her  back  upon  her  old 

faith. 

Like  so  many  other  women  of  suppressed  romantic 
emotions,  when  the  moment  came  for  some  heroic 
sacrifice  for  the  sake  of  her  friend,  she  at  once  threw 
into  the  troubled  w^aters  the  consecrated  oil  that  had 
anointed  the  half-forgotten  piety  of  her  childhood. 

One  curious  and  interesting  psychological  fact  in 
connection  with  this  new  trend  of  feeling  in  her,  was 
the  fact  that  the  actual  realistic  horror  of  being,  in 
a  literal  and  material  sense,  at  the  mercy  of  Mr.  John 
Goring  never  presented  itself  to  her  mind  at  all. 
Its  very  dreadfulness,  being  a  thing  that  amounted  to 
sheer  death,  blurred  and  softened  its  tangible  and 
palpable  image. 

Yet  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  she  meditated 
definitely  upon  any  special  line  of  action.  She  formu- 
lated no  plan  of  self-destruction.  For  some  strange 
reason,  it  was  much  less  the  bodily  terror  of  the 
idea  that  rose  up  awful  and  threatening  before  her, 
than  its  spiritual  and  moral  counterpart. 

Had  Lacrima  been  compelled,  like  poor  Sonia  in  the 
Russian  novel,  to  become  a  harlot  for  the  sake  of 
those  she  loved,  it  would  have  been  the  mental 
rather  than  the  physical  outrage  that  would  have 
weighed  upon  her. 

She  was  of  that  curious  human  type  which  sepa- 
rates the  body  from  the  soul,  in  all  these  things. 
She  had  always  approached  life  rather  through  her 
mind  than  through  her  senses,  and  it  was  in  the  imag- 
ination   that    she   found    both    her   catastrophes    and 


LACRIMA  291 


recoveries.  In  this  particular  case,  the  obsessing  image 
of  death  had  for  the  moment  quite  obliterated  the 
more  purely  realistic  aspect  of  what  she  was  contem- 
plating. Her  feeling  may  perhaps  be  best  described 
by  saying  that  whenever  she  imaged  the  farmer's 
possession  of  her,  it  was  always  as  if  what  he  pos- 
sessed was  no  more  than  a  dead  inert  corpse,  about 
whose  fate  none,  least  of  all  herself,  could  have  any 
further  care. 

She  had  just  counted  the  strokes  of  the  church 
clock  striking  four,  when  she  heard  Gladys'  steps  in 
the  adjoining  room.  She  hurriedly  concealed  the 
little  purple-covered  volume,  and  lay  back  once  more 
upon  her  pillows.  She  fervently  prayed  in  her  heart 
that  Gladys  might  be  ignorant  of  what  had  occurred, 
but  her  knowledge  of  the  relations  between  father  and 
daughter  made  this  a  very  forlorn  hope. 

Such  as  it  was,  it  was  entirely  dispelled  as  soon  as 
the  fair-haired  creature  glided  in  and  sat  down  at 
the  foot  of  her  bed. 

Gladys  looked  at  her  cousin  with  intent  and  luxuri- 
ous interest;  her  expression  being  very  much  what 
one  might  suppose  the  countenance  of  a  young  pagan 
priestess  to  have  worn,  as  she  gazed,  dreamily  and 
sweetly,  in  a  pause  of  the  sacrificial  procession,  at 
some  doomed  heifer  "lowing  at  the  skies,  and  all  her 
silken  flanks  with  garlands  dressed." 

"So  I  hear  that  you  are  going  to  be  married,"  she 
began  at  once,  speaking  in  a  slow,  liquid  voice,  and 
toying  indolently  with  her  friend's  shoe-strings. 

"Please  —  please  don't  talk  about  it,"  murmured 
the  Italian.  "Nothing  is  settled  yet.  I  would  so 
much  rather  not  think  of  it  now." 


292  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"But,  how  .silly!"  cried  the  other,  with  a  melodious 
little  laugh.  "Of  course  we  must  talk  about  it.  It  is 
so  extremely  exciting!  I  shall  be  seeing  uncle  John 
today  and  I  must  congratulate  him.  I  am  sure  he 
doesn't  half  know  how  lucky  he  is." 

Lacrima  jumped  up  from  where  she  lay  and  step- 
ping to  the  window  looked  out  over  the  sunlit  park. 

Gladys  rose  too,  and  standing  behind  her  cousin, 
put  her  arms  round  her  waist. 

"No,  I  am  sure  he  doesn't  realize  how  sweet  you 
are,"  she  whispered.  "You  darling  little  thing, — 
you  little,  shy,  frightened  thing  —  you  must  tell  me 
all  about  it!  I'll  try  not  to  tease  you  —  I  really 
will!  What  a  clever,  naughty  little  girl,  it  has  been, 
peeping  and  glancing  at  a  poor  elderly  farmer  and 
inflaming  his  simple  heart!  But  all  your  friends  are 
rather  well  advanced  in  age,  aren't  they,  dear.''  I 
expect  uncle  John  is  really  no  older  than  Mr.  Quincunx 
or  James  Andersen.  What  tricks  do  you  use,  darling, 
to  attract  all  these  people? 

"I'll  tell  you  what  it  is!  It's  the  way  you  clasp 
your  fingers,  and  keep  groping  with  your  hands  in 
the  air  in  front  of  you,  as  if  you  were  blind.  I've 
noticed  that  trick  of  yours  for  a  long  time.  I  expect 
it  attracts  them  awfully!  I  expect  they  all  long  to 
take  those  little  wrists  and  hold  them  tight!  And 
the  drooping,  dragging  way  you  walk,  too;  that  no 
doubt  they  find  quite  enthralling.  It  has  often  irri- 
tated me,  but  I  can  quite  see  now  why  you  do  it. 
It  must  make  them  long  to  support  you  in  their 
strong  arms!  What  a  crafty  little  puss  she  is!  And 
I  have  sometimes  taken  her  for  no  better  than  a 
little  simpleton!     I   see  I   shall   not  for  long  be  the 


LACRIMA  293 


only  person  allowed  to  kiss  our  charming  La- 
crimal So  I  must  make  the  best  of  my  opportunities, 
mustn't  I?" 

Suiting  her  action  to  her  words  she  turned  the  girl 
towards  her  with  a  vigorous  movement,  and  over- 
coming her  reluctance,  embraced  her  softly,  whisper- 
ing, as  she  kissed  her  averted  mouth,  — 

"Uncle  John  won't  do  this  half  so  prettily  as  I  do, 
will  he?  But  oh,  how  you  must  have  played  your 
tricks  upon  him  —  cunning,  cunning  little  thing!" 

Lacrima  had  by  this  time  reached  the  end  of  her 
endurance.  With  a  sudden  flash  of  genuine  Italian 
anger  she  flung  her  cousin  back,  with  such  unexpected 
violence,  that  the  elder  girl  would  actually  have 
fallen  to  the  floor,  if  she  had  not  encountered  in  her 
collapse  the  arm  of  the  wicker  chair  which  stood 
behind  her. 

She  rose  silent  and  malignant. 

"So  that's  what  we  gentle,  wily  ones  do,  is  it, 
when  we  lose  our  little  tempers!  All  right,  my 
friend,  all  right!     I  shall  remember." 

She  walked  haughtily  to  the  door  that  divided  their 
rooms. 

"The  sooner  I  am  married,"  she  cried,  as  a  final 
hit,  "the  sooner  you  will  be  —  and  I  shall  be  married 
soon  —  soon  —  soon;  perhaps  before  this  summer  is 
out!" 

Lacrima  stood  for  some  moments  rigid  and  un- 
moving.  Then  there  came  over  her  an  irresistible 
longing  to  escape  from  this  house,  and  flee  far  off, 
anywhere,  anyhow,  so  long  as  she  could  be  alone  with 
her  misery,  alone  with  her  tragic  resolution. 

The  invasion  of  Gladys  had  made  this  resolution 


294  WOOD   AND   STONE 

a  very  diflereut  thing  from  what  it  had  seemed  an 
hour  ago.  But  she  must  recover  herself!  She  must 
see  things  again  in  the  clearer,  larger  light  of  sublime 
sacrifice.  She  must  purge  the  baseness  of  her  cousin's 
sensual  magnetism  out  of  her  brain  and  her  heart! 

She  hurriedly  fastened  on  her  hat,  took  her  faded 
parasol,  slipped  the  tiny  St.  Thomas  into  her  dress, 
and  ran  down  the  great  oak  staircase.  She  hurried 
past  the  entrance  without  turning  aside  to  greet  the 
impassive  Mrs.  Romer,  seated  as  usual  in  her  accus- 
tomed place,  and  skirting  the  east  lawns  emerged 
from  the  little  postern-gate  into  the  park.  Crossing 
a  half-cut  hayfield  and  responding  gravely  and  gently 
to  the  friendly  greetings  of  the  hay-makers,  she 
entered  the  Yeoborough  road  just  below  the  steep 
ascent,  between  high  over-shadowing  hedges,  of  Dead 
Man's  Lane. 

Whether  from  her  first  exit  from  the  house,  she 
had  intended  to  follow  this  path,  she  could  hardly 
herself  have  told.  It  w^as  the  instinct  of  a  woman  at 
bay,  seeking  out,  not  the  strong  that  could  help  her, 
but  the  weak  that  she  herself  could  help.  It  was 
also  perhaps  the  true  Pariah  impulse,  which  drives 
these  victims  of  the  powerful  and  the  well-constituted, 
to  find  rehabilitation  in  the  society  of  one  another. 

As  she  ascended  the  shadowy  lane  with  its  crum- 
bling banks  of  sandy  soil  and  its  over-hanging  trees, 
she  felt  once  again  how  persistently  this  heavy 
luxuriant  landscape  dragged  her  earthwards  and 
clogged  the  wings  of  her  spirit.  The  tall  grasses 
growing  thick  by  the  way-side  enlaced  themselves 
with  the  elder-bushes  and  dog-wood,  which  in  their 
turn    blended    indissolubly    with    the    lower   branches 


LACRIMA  295 


of  the  elms.  The  lane  itself  was  but  a  deep  shadowy 
path  dividing  a  flowing  sea  of  foliage,  which  seemed 
to  pour,  in  a  tidal  wave  of  suffocating  fertility,  over 
the  whole  valley. 

The  Italian  struggled  in  vain  against  the  depressing 
influence  of  all  these  rank  and  umbrageous  growths, 
spreading  out  leafy  arms  to  catch  her  and  groping 
towards  her  with  moist  adhesive  tendrils.  The  lane 
was  full  of  a  warm  steamy  vapour,  like  that  of  a 
hot-house,  to  the  heavy  odour  of  which,  every  sort 
of  verdurous  growing  thing  offered  its  contribution. 

There  was  a  vague  smell  of  funguses  in  the  air, 
though  none  were  visible;  and  the  idea  of  them  may 
only  have  been  due  to  the  presence  of  decaying  wood 
or  the  moist  drooping  stalks  of  the  dead  flowers  of 
the  earlier  season.  Now  and  again  the  girl  caught, 
wafted  upon  a  sudden  stir  of  wind,  the  indescribably 
sweet  scent  of  honey-suckle  —  a  sweetness  almost 
overpowering  in  its  penetrating  voluptuous  approach. 
Once,  high  up  above  her  head,  she  saw  a  spray  of  this 
fragrant  parasite;  not  golden  yellow,  as  it  is  where 
the  sun  shines  full  upon  it,  but  pallid  and  ivory-white. 
In  a  curious  way  it  seemed  as  if  this  Nevilton  scenery 
offered  her  no  escape  from  the  insidious  sensuality 
she  fled. 

The  indolent  luxuriousness  of  Gladys  seemed  to 
breathe  from  every  mossy  spore  and  to  over-hang 
every  unclosing  frond.  And  if  Gladys  was  in  the 
leaves  and  grass,  the  remoter  terror  of  Mr.  Goring 
was  in  the  earth  and  clay.  Between  the  two  they 
monopolized  this  whole  corner  of  the  planet,  and 
made  everything  between  zenith  and  nadir  their 
privileged  pasture. 


296  WOOD   AND   STONE 

As  she  drew  nearer  to  where  Mr.  Quincunx  lived, 
her  burdened  mind  sought  relief  in  focussing  itself 
upon  him.  She  would  be  sure  to  find  him  in  his 
garden.  That  she  knew,  because  the  day  was  Satur- 
day.    Should  she  tell  him  what  had  happened  to  her.'* 

Ah!  that  was  indeed  the  crucial  question!  Was  it 
necessary  that  she  should  sacrifice  herself  for  him 
without  his  even  knowing  what  she  did? 

But  he  would  have  to  know,  sooner  or  later,  of 
this  marriage.  Everyone  would  be  talking  of  it.  It 
would  be  bound  to  come  to  his  ears. 

And  what  would  he  think  of  her  if  she  said  nothing? 
What  would  he  think  of  her,  in  any  case,  having 
accepted  such  a  degradation? 

Not  to  tell  him  at  all,  would  throw  a  completely 
false  light  upon  the  whole  transaction.  It  would  make 
her  appear  treacherous,  fickle,  worldly-minded,  shame- 
less —  wickedly  false  to  her  unwritten  covenant  with 
himself. 

To  tell  him,  without  giving  him  the  true  motive  of 
her  sacrifice,  would  be,  she  felt  sure,  to  bring  down 
his  bitterest  reproaches  on  her  head. 

For  a  passing  second  she  felt  a  wave  of  indignation 
against  him  surge  up  in  her  heart.  This,  however, 
she  passionately  suppressed,  with  the  instinctive  de- 
sire of  a  woman  who  is  sacrificing  herself  to  feel  the 
object  of  such  sacrifice  worthy  of  what  is  offered. 

It  was  not  long  before  she  reached  the  gate  of  Mr. 
Quincunx's  garden.  Yes,  —  there  he  was  —  with  his 
wheel-barrow  and  his  hoe  —  bending  over  his  pota- 
toes. She  opened  the  gate  and  walked  quite  close 
up  to  him  before  he  observed  her.  He  greeted  her  in 
his  usual   manner,  with  a  smile  of  half-cynical,  half- 


LACRIMA  297 


affectionate  welcome,  and  taking  her  by  the  hand 
as  he  might  have  taken  a  child,  he  led  her  to  the 
one  shady  spot  in  his  garden,  where,  under  a  weeping 
ash,  he  had  constructed  a  rough  bench. 

"I  didn't  expect  you,"  he  said,  when  they  were 
seated.  "I  never  do  expect  you.  People  like  me  who 
have  only  Saturday  afternoons  to  enjoy  themselves 
in  don't  expect  visitors.  They  count  the  hours 
which  are  left  to  them  before  the  night  comes." 

"But  you  have  Sunday,  my  friend,"  she  said,  lay- 
ing her  hand  upon  his. 

"Sunday!"  Mr.  Quincunx  muttered.  "Do  you  call 
Sunday  a  day?  I  regard  Sunday  as  a  sort  of  prison- 
exercise,  when  all  the  convicts  go  walking  up  and 
down  and  showing  off  their  best  clothes.  I  can  neither 
work  nor  read  nor  think  on  Sunday.  I  have  to  put  on 
my  best  clothes  like  the  rest,  and  stand  at  my  gate, 
staring  at  the  weather  and  wondering  what  the 
hay-crop  will  be.  The  only  interesting  moments  I 
have  on  Sunday  are  when  that  silly-faced  Wone,  or 
one  of  the  Andersens,  drifts  this  way,  and  we  lean 
over  my  wall  and  abuse  the  gentry." 

"Poor  dear!"  said  the  girl  pityingly.  "I  expect 
the  real  truth  is  that  you  are  so  tired  with  your  work 
all  the  week,  that  you  are  glad  enough  to  rest  and 
do  nothing." 

Mr.  Quincunx's  nostrils  dilated,  and  his  drooping 
moustache  quivered.  A  smile  of  delicious  and  sar- 
donic humour  wavered  over  the  lower  portion  of  his 
face,  while  his  grey  eyes  lost  their  sadness  and 
gleamed  with  a  goblin-like  merriment. 

"I  am  getting  quite  popular  at  the  office,"  he  said. 
"I  have  learnt  the  secret  of  it  now." 


298  WOOD   AND   STONE 

"And  what  is  the  secret?"  asked  Lacrima,  sup- 
pressing a  queer  little  gasp  in  her  throat. 

"Sucking  up,"  Mr.  Quincunx  answered,  his  face 
flickering  with  subterranean  amusement,  "sucking  up 
to  everyone  in  the  place,  from  the  manager  to  the 
oflSce  boy." 

Lacrima  returned  to  him  a  very  wan  little  smile. 

"I  suppose  you  mean  ingratiating  yourself,"  she 
said;  "you  English  have  such  funny  expressions." 

"Yes,  ingratiating  myself,  pandering  to  them,  flat- 
tering them,  agreeing  with  them,  anticipating  their 
wishes,  doing  their  w'ork  for  them,  telling  lies  for 
them,  abusing  God  to  make  them  laugh,  introducing 
them  to  Guy  de  Maupassant,  and  even  making  a 
few  light  references,  now  and  again,  to  what  Shake- 
speare calls  'country-matters.'" 

"I  don't  believe  a  word  you  say,"  protested  Lacrima 
in  rather  a  quavering  voice.  "I  believe  you  hate  them 
all  and  that  they  are  all  unkind  to  you.  But  I  can  quite 
imagine  you  have  to  do  more  work  than  your  own." 

Mr.  Quincunx's  countenance  lost  its  merriment 
instantaneously. 

"I  believe  you  are  as  annoyed  as  Mr.  Romer,"  he 
said,  "that  I  should  get  on  in  the  office.  But  I  am 
past  being  affected  by  that.  I  know  what  human 
nature  is!  We  are  all  really  pleased  when  other 
people  get  on  badly,  and  are  sorry  when  they  do 
well." 

Lacrima  felt  as  though  the  trees  in  the  field  oppo- 
site had  suddenly  reversed  themselves  and  were 
waving  their  roots  in  the  air. 

She  gave  a  little  shiver  and  pressed  her  hand  to 
her  side. 


LACRIMA  299 


Mr.  Quincunx  continued. 

"Of  course  you  don't  like  it  when  I  tell  you  the 
truth.  Nobody  likes  to  hear  the  truth.  Human 
beings  lap  up  lies  as  pigs  lap  up  milk.  And  women 
are  worst  of  all  in  that!  No  woman  really  can  love 
a  person  —  not,  at  any  rate,  for  long  —  who  tells 
her  the  truth!  That  is  why  women  love  clergymen, 
because  clergymen  are  brought  up  to  lie.  I  saw  you 
laughing  and  amusing  yourself  the  other  evening  with 
Mr,  Clavering  —  you  and  your  friend  Gladys.  I 
went  the  other  way,  so  as  not  to  interrupt  such  a 
merry  conversation." 

Lacrima  turned  upon  him  at  this. 

"I  cannot  understand  how  you  can  say  such  things 
of  me!"  she  cried.  "It  is  too  much.  I  won't — ^I 
won't  listen  to  it!" 

Her  over-strained  nerves  broke  down  at  last,  and 
covering  her  face  with  her  hands,  she  burst  into  a  fit 
of  convulsive  sobs. 

Mr.  Quincunx  rose  and  stood  gazing  at  her, 
gloomily  plucking  at  his  beard. 

"And  such  are  women!"  he  thought  to  himself. 
"One  can  never  tell  them  the  least  truth  but  they 
burst  into  tears." 

He  waited  thus  in  silence  for  one  or  two  moments, 
and  then  an  expression  of  exquisite  tenderness  and 
sympathy  came  into  his  face.  His  patient  grey  eyes 
looked  at  her  bowed  head  with  the  look  of  a  sorrow- 
ful god.  Gently  he  sat  down  beside  her  and  laid  his 
hand  on  her  shoulder. 

"Lacrima  —  dear  —  I  am  sorry  —  I  oughtn't  to 
have  said  that.  I  didn't  mean  it.  On  my  solemn 
oath  I  didn't  mean  it!    Lacrima,  please  don't  cry.     I 


300  WOOD   AND   STONE 

can't  bear  it  when  you  cry.  It  was  all  absolute  non- 
sense what  I  said  just  now.  It  is  the  devil  that 
gets  into  me  and  makes  me  say  those  things! 
Lacrima  —  darling  Lacrima  —  we  won't  tease  one 
another  any  more." 

Her  sobs  diminished  under  the  obvious  sincerity 
of  his  words.  She  lifted  up  a  tear-stained  face  and 
threw  her  arms  passionately  round  his  neck. 

"I've  no  one  but  you,"  she  cried,  "no  one,  no  one!" 

For  several  minutes  they  embraced  each  other  in 
silence  —  the  girl's  breast  quivering  with  the  after- 
sighs  of  her  emotion  and  their  tears  mingling  together 
and  falling  on  Mr.  Quincunx's  beard.  Had  Gladys 
Romer  beheld  them  at  that  moment  she  would  cer- 
tainly have  been  strengthened  in  her  healthy-minded 
mocking  contempt  for  sentimental  "slobbering." 

When  they  had  resumed  a  more  normal  mood  their 
conversation  continued  gently  and  quietly. 

"Of  course  you  are  right,"  said  Mr.  Quincunx.  "I 
am  not  really  happy  at  the  office.  Who  could  be 
happy  in  a  place  of  that  kind?  But  it  is  my  life  — 
and  one  has  to  do  what  one  can  with  one's  life!  I 
have  to  pretend  to  myself  that  they  like  me  there,  and 
that  I  am  making  myself  useful  —  otherwise  I  simply 
could  not  go  on.  I  have  to  pretend.  That's  what 
it  is!  It  is  hiy  pet  illusion,  my  little  fairy-story.  It 
was  that  that  made  me  get  angry  with  you  —  that  and 
the  devil.  One  doesn't  like  to  have  one's  fairy-stories 
broken  into  by  the  brutal  truth." 

"Poor  dear!"  said  Lacrima  softly,  stroking  his 
hand  with  a  gesture  of  maternal  tenderness. 

"If  there  was  any  hope  of  this  wretched  business 
coming  to  an  end,"  Maurice  went  on,  "it  would  be 


LACRIMA  301 


different.  Then  I  would  curse  all  these  people  to 
hell  and  have  done  with  it.  But  what  can  I  do? 
1  am  already  past  middle  age.  I  shouldn't  be  able 
to  get  anything  else  if  I  gave  it  up.  And  I  don't 
want  to  leave  Nevilton  while  you  are  here." 

The  girl  looked  intently  at  him.  Then  she  folded 
her  hands  on  her  lap  and  began  gravely. 

"I  have  something  to  tell  you,  Maurice  dear. 
Something  very  important.  What  would  you  say  if 
I  told  you  that  it  was  in  my  power  to  set  you  free 
from  all  this  and  make  you  happy  and  comfortable 
for  the  rest  of  your  life.^*" 

An  invisible  watcher  from  some  more  clairvoyant 
planet  than  ours  would  have  been  interested  at  that 
moment  in  reading  the  double  weakness  of  two  poor 
Pariah  hearts.  Lacrima,  brought  back  from  the  half- 
insane  attitudes  of  her  heroic  resolution  by  the  inter- 
mission of  natural  human  emotion,  found  herself  on 
the  brink  of  half-hoping  that  her  friend  would  com- 
pletely and  indignantly  refuse  this  shameful  sacrifice. 

"Surely,"  her  heart  whispered,  "some  other  path  of 
escape  must  offer  itself  for  them  both.  Perhaps, 
after  all,  Vennie  Seldom  might  discover  some  way." 

Mr.  Quincunx,  on  the  other  hand,  was  most  thor- 
oughly alarmed  by  her  opening  words.  He  feared 
that  she  was  going  to  propose  some  desperate  scheme 
by  which,  fleeing  from  Nevilton  together,  she  was  to 
help  him  earn  money  enough  for  their  mutual  support. 

"What  should  I  say?"  he  answered  aloud,  to  the 
girl's  question.  "It  would  depend  upon  the  manner 
in  which  you  worked  this  wonderful  miracle.  But  I 
warn  you  I  am  not  hopeful.  Things  might  be  worse. 
After  all  I  have  a  house  to  return  to.     I  have  food. 


302  WOOD  AND   STONE 

I  have  my  books.  I  have  you  to  come  and  pay  me 
visits.  I  have  my  garden.  In  this  world,  when  a 
person  has  a  roof  over  his  head,  and  someone  to  talk 
to  every  other  day,  he  had  better  remain  still  and 
not  attract  the  attention  of  the  gods." 

Silence  followed  his  words.  Instead  of  speaking, 
Lacrima  took  off  her  hat,  and  smoothed  her  hair 
away  from  her  forehead,  keeping  her  eyes  fixed  upon 
the  ground.  An  immense  temptation  seized  her  to 
let  the  moment  pass  without  revealing  her  secret. 
She  could  easily  substitute  any  imaginary  suggestion 
in  place  of  the  terrible  reality.  Her  friend's  morbid 
nerves  would  help  her  deception.  The  matter  would 
be  glossed  over  and  be  as  if  it  had  never  been:  be,  in 
fact,  no  more  than  it  was,  a  hideous  nightmare  of 
her  own  insane  and  diseased  conscience. 

But  could  the  thing  be  so  suppressed?  Would  it 
be  like  Nevilton  to  let  even  the  possible  image  of 
such  a  drama  pass  unsnatched  at  by  voluble  tongues, 
unenlarged  upon  by  malicious  gossip.'* 

He  would  be  bound  to  hear  of  Mr.  Goring's  offer. 
That,  at  least,  could  not  be  concealed.  And  what 
assurance  had  she  that  Mr.  Romer  would  not  himself 
communicate  to  him  the  full  nature  of  the  hideous 
bargain?  The  quarry-owner  might  think  it  diplo- 
matic to  trade  upon  Maurice's  weakness. 

No  —  there  was  no  help  for  it.  She  must  tell  him ; 
—  only  praying  now,  in  the  profound  depths  of  her 
poor  heart,  that  he  would  not  consider  such  an  infamy 
even  for  a  second.  So  she  told  him  the  whole  story, 
in  a  low  monotonous  voice,  keeping  her  head  lowered 
and  watching  the  progress  of  a  minute  snail  labori- 
ously ascending  a  stalk  of  grass. 


LACRIMA  303 


Maurice  Quincunx  had  never  twiddled  the  point  of 
his  Elizabethan  beard  with  more  detached  absorption 
than  while  listening  to  this  astounding  narration. 
When  she  had  quite  finished,  he  regarded  her  from 
head  to  foot  with  a  very  curious  expression. 

The  girl  breathed  hard.  What  was  he  thinking? 
He  did  not  at  once,  in  a  burst  of  righteous  indigna- 
tion, fling  the  monstrous  suggestion  to  the  winds. 
What  was  he  thinking.?  As  a  matter  of  fact  the 
thoughts  of  Mr.  Quincunx  had  taken  an  extraor- 
dinary turn. 

Being  in  his  personal  relation  to  feminine  charm, 
of  a  somewhat  cold  temper,  he  had  never,  for  all  his 
imaginative  sentiment  towards  his  little  friend,  been 
at  all  swayed  by  any  violent  sensuous  attraction. 
But  the  idea  of  such  attraction  having  seized  so 
strongly  upon  another  person  reacted  upon  him,  and 
he  looked  at  her,  perhaps  for  the  first  time  since 
they  had  met,  with  eyes  of  something  more  than 
purely  sentimental  regard. 

This  new  element  in  his  attitude  towards  her  did 
not,  however,  issue  in  any  excess  of  physical  jealousy. 
What  it  did  lead  to,  unluckily  for  Lacrima,  was  a 
certain  queer  diminution  of  his  ideal  respect  for  her 
personality.  In  place  of  focussing  his  attention  upon 
the  sublime  sacrifice  she  contemplated  for  his  sake,  the 
events  she  narrated  concentrated  his  mind  upon  the 
mere  brutal  and  accidental  fact  that  Mr.  Goring 
had  so  desperately  desired  her.  The  mere  fact  of 
her  having  been  so  desired  by  such  a  man,  changed 
her  in  his  eyes.  His  cynical  distrust  of  all  women 
led  him  to  conceive  the  monstrous  and  grotesque  idea 
that  she   must  in   her  heart   be  gratified   by   having 


304  WOOD   AND   STONE 

aroused  this  passion  in  the  farmer.  It  did  not  carry 
him  quite  so  far  as  to  make  him  believe  that  she  had 
consciously  excited  such  emotion;  but  it  led  him  to 
the  very  brink  of  that  outrageous  fantasy.  Had 
Lacrima  come  to  him  with  a  shame-faced  confession 
that  she  had  let  herself  be  seduced  by  the  Priory- 
tenant  he  could  hardly  have  gazed  at  her  with  more 
changed  and  troubled  eyes.  He  felt  the  same  curious 
mixture  of  sorrowful  pity  and  remote  unlawful  attrac- 
tion to  the  object  of  his  pity,  that  he  would  have 
felt  in  a  casual  conversation  with  some  luckless  child 
of  the  streets.  By  being  the  occasion  of  Mr.  Goring's 
passion,  she  became  for  him  no  less  than  such  an 
unfortunate;  the  purer  sentiment  he  had  hitherto 
cherished  changing  into  quite  a  different  mood. 

He  lifted  her  up  by  the  wrists  and  pressed  her 
closely  to  him,  kissing  her  again  and  again.  The 
girl's  heart  went  on  anxiously  beating.  She  could 
hardly  restrain  her  impatience  for  him  to  speak. 
Why  did  he  not  speak.? 

Disentangling  herself  from  his  embrace  with  a  quick 
feminine  instinct  that  something  was  w^rong,  she 
pulled  him  down  upon  the  bench  by  her  side  and 
taking  his  hand  in  hers  looked  with  pitiful  bewilder- 
ment into  his  face. 

"So  when  this  thing  happens,"  she  said,  "all  your 
troubles  will  be  over.  You  will  be  free  forever  from 
that  horrid  office." 

"And  you,"  said  Mr.  Quincunx  —  his  mood  chan- 
ging again,  and  his  goblin-like  smile  twitching  his 
nostrils,  —  "You  will  be  the  mistress  of  the  Priory. 
Well!  I  suppose  you  will  not  desert  me  altogether 
when  that  happens!" 


LACRIMA  305 


So  that  was  the  tone  he  adopted!  He  could  afford 
to  turn  the  thing  into  a  jest  —  into  God  knows  what! 
She  let  his  hand  drop  and  stared  into  empty  space, 
seeing  nothing,  hearing  nothing,  understanding  nothing. 

This  time  Maurice  realized  that  he  had  disappointed 
her;  that  his  cynicism  had  carried  him  too  far.  Un- 
fortunately the  same  instinct  that  told  him  he  had 
made  a  fool  of  himself  pushed  him  on  to  seek  an 
issue  from  the  situation  by  wading  still  further  into  it. 

"Come  —  come,"  he  said.  "You  and  I  must  face 
this  matter  like  people  who  are  really  free  spirits, 
and  not  slaves  to  any  ridiculous  superstition.  It  is 
noble,  it  is  sweet  of  you  to  think  of  marrying  that 
brute  so  as  to  set  me  free.  Of  course  if  I  was  free, 
and  you  were  up  at  the  Priory,  we  should  see  a  great 
deal  more  of  each  other  than  we  do  now.  I  could 
take  one  of  those  vacant  cottages  close  to  the  church. 

"Don't  think  —  Lacrima  dear,"  he  went  on,  pos- 
sessing himself  of  one  of  her  cold  hands  and  trying  to 
recall  her  attention,  "don't  think  that  I  don't  realize 
what  it  is  to  you  to  have  to  submit  to  such  a  fright- 
ful thing.  Of  course  we  know  how  outrageous  it  is 
that  such  a  marriage  should  be  forced  on  you.  But, 
after  all,  you  and  I  are  above  these  absurd  popular 
superstitions  about  all  these  things.  Every  girl 
sooner  or  later  hates  the  man  she  marries.  It  is 
human  nature  to  hate  the  people  we  have  to  live 
with;  and  when  it  comes  down  to  actual  reality,  all 
human  beings  are  much  the  same.  If  you  were 
forced  to  marry  me,  you  would  probably  hate  me 
just  as  much  as  you'll  hate  this  poor  devil.  After 
all,  what  is  this  business  of  being  married  to  people 
and  bearing  them  children?     It  doesn't  touch  your 


306  WOOD  AND   STONE 

mind.  It  doesn't  affect  your  soul.  As  old  Marcus 
Aurelius  says,  our  bodies  are  nothing!  They  are 
wretched  corpses,  anyway,  dragged  hither  and  thither 
by  our  imprisoned  souls.  It  is  these  damned  clergy- 
men, with  their  lies  about  *sin'  and  so  forth,  that 
upset  women's  minds.  For  you  to  be  married  to 
a  man  you  hate,  would  only  be  like  my  having 
to  go  to  this  Yeoborough  office  with  people  I 
hate.  You  will  always  have,  as  that  honest  fellow 
Epictetus  says,  your  own  soul  to  retire  into,  what- 
ever happens.  Heavens!  it  strikes  me  as  a  bit  of 
humorous  revenge,"  —  here  his  nostrils  twitched  again 
and  the  hobgoblin  look  reappeared  —  "this  thought 
of  you  and  me  living  peacefully  at  our  ease,  so  near 
one  another,  and  at  these  confounded  rascals' 
expense!" 

Lacrima  staggered  to  her  feet.  "Let  me  go,"  she 
said.     "I  want  to  go  back  —  away  —  anywhere." 

Her  look,  her  gesture,  her  broken  words  gave  Mr. 
Quincunx  a  poignant  shock.  In  one  sudden  illumi- 
nating flash  he  saw  himself  as  he  was,  and  his  recent 
remarks  in  their  true  light.  We  all  have  sometimes 
these  psychic  search-light  flashes  of  introspection; 
but  the  more  healthy-minded  and  well-balanced 
among  us  know  how  to  keep  them  in  their  place  and 
how  to  expel  them  promptly  and  effectively. 

Mr.  Quincunx  was  not  healthy-minded.  He  had 
the  morbid  sensitive  mind  of  a  neurotic  Pariah. 
Hence,  in  place  of  suppressing  this  spiritual  illumina- 
tion, he  allowed  it  to  irradiate  the  gloomiest  caverns 
of  his  being.  He  rose  with  a  look  of  abject  and 
miserable  concern. 

"Stop,"  he  cried  huskily. 


LACRIMA  307 


She  looked  at  him  wondering,  the  blood  returning 
a  little  to  her  cheeks. 

"It  is  the  Devil!"  he  exclaimed.  "I  must  have 
the  Devil  in  me,  to  say  such  things  and  to  treat  you 
like  this.  You  are  the  bravest,  sweetest  girl  in  the 
world,  and  I  am  a  brutal  idiot  —  worse  than  Mr. 
Romer!" 

He  struck  himself  several  blows  upon  the  forehead, 
knocking  off  his  hat.  Lacrima  could  not  help  noticing 
that  in  place  of  the  usual  protection,  some  small 
rhubarb-leaves  ornamented  the  interior  of  this 
appendage. 

She  smiled  at  him,  through  a  rain  of  happy  tears,  — 
the  first  smile  that  day  had  seen  upon  her  face. 

"We  are  both  of  us  absurd  people,  I  suppose," 
she  said,  laying  her  hands  upon  his  shoulders.  "We 
ought  to  have  some  friend  with  a  clear  solid  head  to 
keep  us  straight." 

Mr.  Quincunx  kissed  her  on  the  forehead  and 
stooped  down  for  his  hat. 

"Yes,"  he  said.  "We  are  a  queer  pair.  I  suppose 
we  are  really  both  a  little  mad.  I  wish  there  was 
someone  we  could  go  to." 

"Couldn't  you  —  perhaps — "  said  Lacrima,  "say 
something  to  Mrs.  Seldom.?  And  yet  I  w^ould  much 
rather  she  didn't  know.  I  would  much  rather  no 
one  knew!" 

"I  might,"  murmured  Maurice  thoughtfully;  "I 
might  tell  her.  But  the  unlucky  thing  is,  she  is  so 
narrow-minded  that  she  can't  separate  you  in  her 
thoughts  from  those  frightful  people." 

"Shall  I  try  Vennie.?"  whispered  the  girl,  "or  shall 
we  — "  here  she  looked  him  boldly  in  the  face  with 


308  WOOD  AND   STONE 


eager,  brightening  eyes  — "shall  we  run  away  to 
London,  and  be  married,  and  risk  the  future?" 

Poor  little  Italian!  She  had  never  made  a  greater 
tactical  blunder  than  when  she  uttered  these  words. 
Maurice  Quincunx's  mystic  illumination  had  made 
it  possible  for  him  to  exorcise  his  evil  spirit.  It 
could  not  put  into  his  nature  an  energy  he  had  not 
been  born  with.     His  countenance  clouded. 

"You  don't  know  what  you're  saying,"  he  re- 
marked. "You  don't  know  what  a  sour-tempered 
devil  I  am,  and  how  I  am  sure  to  make  any  girl 
who  lives  with  me  miserable.  You  would  hate  me 
in  a  month  more  than  you  hate  Mr.  Romer,  and  in 
a  year  I  should  have  either  worried  you  into  your 
grave  or  you  would  have  run  away  from  me.  No  — ■ 
no  —  no!  I  should  be  a  criminal  fool  to  let  you 
subject  yourself  to  such  a  risk  as  that." 

"But,"  pleaded  the  girl,  with  flushed  cheeks,  "we 
should  be  sure  to  find  something!  I  could  teach 
Italian,  —  and  you  could  —  oh,  I  am  sure  there  are 
endless  things  you  could  do!  Please,  please,  Maurice 
dear,  let  us  go.  Anything  is  better  than  this  misery. 
I  have  got  quite  enough  money  for  the  journey. 
Look!" 

She  pulled  out  from  beneath  her  dress  a  little 
chain  purse,  that  hung,  by  a  small  silver  chain,  round 
her  slender  neck.  She  opened  it  and  shook  three 
sovereigns  into  the  palm  of  her  hand.  "Enough  for 
the  journey,"  she  said,  "and  enough  to  keep  us  for 
a  week  if  we  are  economical.  We  should  be  sure  to 
find  something  by  that  time." 

Mr.  Quincunx  shook  his  head.  It  was  an  ironical 
piece   of   psychic    malice   that   the    very   illumination 


LACRIMA  309 


which  had  made  him  remorseful  and  sympathetic 
should  have  also  reduced  to  the  old  level  of  tender 
sentiment  the  momentary  passion  he  had  felt.  It 
was  the  absence  in  him  of  this  sensual  impulse  which 
made  the  scheme  she  proposed  seem  so  impossible. 
Had  he  been  of  a  more  animal  nature,  or  had  she 
possessed  the  power  of  arousing  his  senses  to  a  more 
violent  craving,  instead  of  brooding,  as  he  did,  upon 
the  mere  material  difficulties  of  such  a  plan,  he  would 
have  plunged  desperately  into  it  and  carried  her  off 
without  further  argument.  The  very  purity  of  his 
temperament  was  her  worst  enemy. 

Poor  Lacrimal  Her  hands  dropped  once  more 
helplessly  to  her  side,  and  the  old  hopeless  depression 
began  to  invade  her  heart.  It  seemed  impossible  to 
make  her  friend  realize  that  if  she  refused  the  farmer 
and  things  went  on  as  before,  her  position  in  Mr. 
Romer's  establishment  would  become  more  impossible 
than  ever.  What  —  for  instance  —  would  become  of 
her  when  this  long-discussed  marriage  of  Gladys  with 
young  Ilminster  took  place?  Could  she  conceive 
herself  going  on  living  under  that  roof,  with  Mr. 
Romer  continually  harassing  her,  and  his  brother- 
in-law  haunting  every  field  she  wandered  into? 

"It  was  noble  of  you,"  began  her  bearded  friend 
again,  resuming  his  work  at  the  weeds,  while  she,  as 
on  a  former  occasion,  leant  against  his  wheel-bar- 
row, "to  think  of  enduring  this  wretched  marriage 
for  my  sake.  But  I  cannot  let  you  do  it.  I  should 
not  be  happy  in  letting  you  do  it.  I  have  some 
conscience  —  though  you  may  not  think  so  —  and 
it  would  worry  me  to  feel  you  were  putting  up  with 
that    fool's    companionship  just    to    make    me  com- 


310  WOOD  AND   STONE 

fortable.  It  would  spoil  my  enjoyment  of  my  free- 
dom, to  know  that  you  were  not  equally  free.  Of 
course  it  would  be  paradise  to  me  to  have  the  money 
you  speak  of.  I  should  be  able  to  live  exactly  as  I 
like,  and  these  damned  villagers  would  treat  me  with 
proper  respect  then.  But  I  couldn't  do  it.  I  couldn't 
take  my  pleasure  at  the  expense  of  such  a  strain  on 
you.     It  would  spoil  everything! 

"I  don't  deny,  however,"  he  went  on,  evidently 
deriving  more  and  more  virtuous  satisfaction  from 
his  somewhat  indecisive  rejection  of  her  sacrifice, 
"that  it  is  a  temptation  to  me.  I  hate  that  office  so 
profoundly!  You  were  quite  right  there,  Lacrima. 
All  I  said  about  getting  on  with  those  people  was 
damned  bluff.  I  loathe  them  and  they  loathe  me. 
It  is  simply  like  a  kind  of  death,  my  life  in  that 
place.  Yes,  what  you  suggest  is  a  temptation  to  me. 
I  can't  help  feeling  rather  like  that  poor  brother  of 
the  girl  in  '  Measure  for  Measure '  when  she  comes  to 
say  that  she  could  save  his  life  by  the  loss  of  her 
virtue,  and  he  talks  about  his  feelings  on  the  subject 
of  death.  She  put  him  down  fiercely  enough,  poor 
dog!  She  evidently  thought  her  virtue  was  much 
more  important  than  his  life.  I  am  glad  you  are 
just  the  opposite  of  that  puritanical  young  woman. 
I  shouldn't  like  you  very  much  if  you  took  her  line! 

"But  just  because  you  don't  do  that,  my  dear," 
Mr.  Quincunx  went  on,  tugging  at  the  obstinate 
roots  of  a  great  dock,  "I  couldn't  think  of  letting 
you  sacrifice  yourself.  If  you  toere  like  that  woman 
in  the  play,  and  made  all  that  damned  silly  fuss  about 
your  confounded  virtue,  I  should  be  inclined  to  wish 
that  Mr.  Goring  had  got  his  hands  upon  you.    Women 


LACRIMA  311 


who  think  as  much  of  themselves  as  that,  ought  to  be 
given  over  to  honest  fellows  like  Mr.  Goring.  It's  the 
sort  of  punishment  they  deserve  for  their  superstitious 
selfishness.  For  it's  all  selfishness,  of  course.  We 
know  that  well  enough!" 

He  flung  the  defeated  weed  so  vindictively  upon  his 
barrow  that  some  of  the  earth  from  its  roots  was 
sprinkled  into  Lacrima's  lap.  He  came  to  help  her 
brush  it  away,  and  took  the  opportunity  to  kiss  her 
again,  —  this  time  a  shade  more  amorously. 

"All  this  business  of  'love,'"  he  went  on,  returning 
to  his  potatoes,  "is  nothing  but  the  old  eternal 
wickedness  of  man's  nature.  The  only  kind  of  love 
which  is  worth  anything  is  the  love  that  gets  rid  of 
sex  altogether,  and  becomes  calm  and  quiet  and 
distant  —  like  the  love  of  a  planetary  spirit.  Apart 
from  this  love,  which  is  not  like  human  love  at  all, 
everything  in  us  is  selfish.  Even  a  mother's  care  for 
its  child  is  selfish." 

"I  shall  never  have  a  child,"  said  Lacrima  in  a 
low  voice. 

"I  wonder  what  your  friend  James  Andersen  would 
say  to  all  this,"  continued  Mr.  Quincunx.  "Why,  by 
the  way,  don't  you  get  him  to  marry  you?  He  would 
do  it,  no  doubt,  like  a  shot,  if  you  gave  him  a  little 
encouragement;  and  then  make  you  work  all  day  in 
his  kitchen,  as  his  father  made  his  mother,  so  they 
say." 

Lacrima  made  a  hopeless  gesture,  and  looked  at 
the  watch  upon  her  wrist.  She  began  to  feel  dizzy 
and  sick  for  want  of  food.  She  had  had  nothing 
since  breakfast,  and  the  shadows  were  beginning  to 
grow  long. 


312  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"I  know  what  Luke  Andersen  would  say  if  we  asked 
him,"  added  Mr.  Quincunx.  "He  would  advise  you 
to  marry  this  damned  farmer,  wheedle  his  money 
out  of  him,  and  then  sheer  off  with  some  fine  youth 
and  never  see  Nevilton  again!  Luke  Andersen's  the 
fellow  for  giving  a  person  advice  in  these  little 
matters.  He  has  a  head  upon  his  shoulders,  that 
boy!  I  tell  you  what  it  is,  my  dear,  your  precious 
Miss  Gladys  had  better  be  careful!  She'll  be  getting 
herself  into  trouble  with  that  honest  youth  if  she 
doesn't  look  out.  I  know  him.  He  cares  for  no  mor- 
tal soul  in  the  world,  or  above  the  world.  He's  a 
master  in  the  art  of  life!  We  are  all  infants  compared 
with  him.  If  you  do  need  anyone  to  help  you,  or 
to  help  me  either,  I  tell  you  Luke  Andersen's  the 
one  to  go  to.  He  has  more  influence  in  this  village 
than  any  living  person  except  Romer  himself,  and  I 
should  be  sorry  for  Romer  if  his  selfishness  clashed 
with  the  selfishness  of  that  young  Machiavel!" 

"Do  you  mind,"  said  Lacrima  suddenly,  "if  I  go 
into  your  kitchen  and  make  myself  a  cup  of  tea? 
I  feel  rather  exhausted.     I  expect  it  is  the  heat." 

Mr.  Quincunx  looked  intently  at  her,  leaning  upon 
his  hoe.  He  had  only  once  before  —  on  an  excep- 
tionally cold  winter's  day  —  allowed  the  girl  to  enter 
the  cottage. 

He  had  a  vague  feeling  that  if  he  did  so  he  would 
in  some  way  commit  himself,  and  be  betrayed  into 
a  false  position.  He  almost  felt  as  though,  if  she 
were  once  comfortably  established  there,  he  would 
never  be  able  to  get  her  out  again!  He  was  nervous, 
too,  about  her  seeing  all  his  little  household  pecul- 
iarities.  If    she  saw,  for   instance,  how  cheaply,  how 


LACRIMA  313 


very  cheaply,  he  managed  to  live,  eating  no  meat 
and  economizing  in  sugar  and  butter,  she  might  be 
encouraged  still  further  in  her  attempts  to  persuade 
him  to  run  away. 

He  was  also  strangely  reluctant  that  she  should 
get  upon  the  track  of  his  queer  little  lonely  epicurean 
pleasures,  such  as  his  carefully  guarded  bottle  of 
Scotch  whiskey;  his  favourite  shelf  of  mystical  and 
Rabelaisian  books;  his  jar  of  tobacco,  with  a  piece 
of  bread  under  its  lid,  to  keep  the  contents  moist 
and  cool;  his  elaborate  arrangements  for  holding 
draughts  out;  his  polished  pewter;  his  dainty  writing- 
desk  with  its  piled-up,  vellum-bound  journals,  all 
labelled  and  laid  in  order;  his  queer-coloured  oriental 
slippers;  his  array  of  scrupulously  scrubbed  pots  and 
pans.  Mr.  Quincunx  was  extremely  unwilling  that 
his  lady-love  should  poke  her  pretty  fingers  into  all 
these  mysteries. 

What  he  liked,  was  to  live  in  two  distinct  worlds: 
his  world  of  sentiment  with  Lacrima  as  its  solitary 
centre,  and  his  world  of  sacramental  epicurism  with 
his  kitchen-fire  as  its  solitary  centre.  He  was  ex- 
tremely unwilling  that  the  several  circumferences  of 
these  centres  should  intersect  one  another.  Both 
were  equally  necessary  to  him.  When  days  passed 
without  a  visit  from  his  friend  he  became  miserably 
depressed.  But  he  saw  no  reason  for  any  inartistic 
attempt  to  unite  these  two  spheres  of  interest.  A 
psychologist  who  defined  Mr.  Quincunx's  temper  as 
the  temper  of  a  hermit  would  have  been  far  astray. 
He  was  profoundly  dependent  on  human  sympathy. 
But  he  liked  human  sympathy  that  kept  its  place. 
He  did  not  like  human  society.     Perhaps  of  all  well- 


314  WOOD  AND   STONE 

known  psychological  types,  the  type  of  the  phi- 
losopher Rousseau  was  the  one  to  which  he  most 
nearly  approximated.  And  yet,  had  he  possessed 
children,  Mr.  Quincunx  would  certainly  never  have 
been  persuaded  to  leave  them  at  the  foundling 
hospital.  He  would  have  lived  apart  from  them, 
but  he  would  never  have  parted  with  them.  He  was 
really  a  domestic  sentimentalist,  who  loved  the  ex- 
quisite sensation  of  being  alone  with  his  own 
thoughts. 

With  all  this  in  mind,  one  need  feel  no  particular 
surprise  that  the  response  he  gave  to  Lacrima's 
sudden  request  was  a  somewhat  reluctant  one.  How- 
ever, he  did  respond;  and  opening  the  cottage-doors 
for  her,  ushered  her  into  the  kitchen  and  put  the 
kettle  on  the  fire. 

It  puzzled  him  a  little  that  she  should  feel  no  em- 
barrassment at  being  alone  with  him  in  this  secluded 
place !  In  the  depths  of  his  heart  —  like  many 
philosophers  —  Mr.  Quincunx,  in  spite  of  his  anar- 
chistic theories,  possessed  no  slight  vein  of  conven- 
tional timidity.  He  did  not  realize  this  in  the  least. 
Women,  according  to  his  cynical  code,  were  the  sole 
props  of  conventionality.  Without  women,  there 
would  be  no  such  thing  in  the  world.  But  now, 
brought  face  to  face  with  the  reckless  detachment  of 
a  woman  fighting  for  her  living  soul,  he  felt  confused, 
uncomfortable,  and  disconcerted. 

Lacrima  waited  in  patient  passivity,  too  exhausted 
to  make  any  further  mental  or  moral  effort,  while 
her  friend  made  the  tea  and  cut  the  bread-and-butter. 

As  soon  as  she  had  partaken  of  these  things,  her 
exhaustion  gave  place  to  a  delicious  sense  —  the  first 


LACRIMA  315 


she  had  known  for  many  weeks  —  of  peaceful  and 
happy  security.  She  put  far  away,  into  the  remote 
background  of  her  mind,  all  melancholy  and  tragic 
thoughts,  and  gave  herself  up  to  the  peacefulness  of 
the  moment.  The  hands  of  Mr.  Quincunx's  clock 
pointed  to  half-past  six.  She  had  therefore  a  clear 
thirty  minutes  left,  before  she  need  set  out  on  her 
return  walk,  in  order  to  have  time  to  dress  for  dinner. 

"I  wonder  if  your  Miss  Gladys,"  remarked  La- 
crima's  host,  lighting  a  cigarette  as  he  sipped  his 
tea,  "will  marry  the  Honourable  Mr.  Ilminster  after 
all,  or  whistle  him  down  the  wind,  and  make  up  to 
our  American  friend?  I  notice  that  Dangelis  is 
already  considerably  absorbed  in  her." 

"Please,  dear,  don't  let  us  talk  any  more  about 
these  people,"  begged  Lacrima  softly.  "Let  me  be 
happy  for  a  little  while." 

Mr.  Quincunx  stroked  his  beard.  "You  are  a 
queer  little  girl,"  he  said.  "But  what  I  should  do 
if  the  gods  took  you  away  from  me  I  have  not  the 
least  idea.  I  should  not  care  then  whether  I  worked 
in  an  office  or  in  a  factory.  I  should  not  care  what 
I  did." 

The  girl  jumped  up  impulsively  from  her  seat  and 
went  over  to  him.  Mr.  Quincunx  took  her  upon  his 
knees  as  he  might  have  taken  a  child  and  fondled  her 
gravely  and  gently.  The  smoke  of  his  cigarette 
ascended  in  a  thin  blue  column  above  their  two 
heads. 

At  that  moment  there  was  a  mocking  laugh  at  the 
window.  Lacrima  slid  out  of  his  arms  and  they  both 
rose  to  their  feet  and  turned  indignantly. 

The    laughing    face    of    Gladys    Romer    peered    in 


316  WOOD  AND   STONE 

upon  them,  her  eyes  shining  with  delighted  malevo- 
lence. "I  saw  you,"  she  cried.  "But  you  needn't 
look  so  cross!  I  like  to  see  these  things.  I  have  been 
watching  you  for  quite  a  long  time!  It  has  been  such 
fun!  I  only  hoped  I  could  keep  quiet  for  longer  still, 
till  one  of  you  began  to  cry,  or  something.  But  you 
looked  so  funny  that  I  couldn't  help  laughing.  And 
that  spoilt  it  all.  Mr.  Dangelis  is  at  the  gate. 
Shall  I  call  him  up?  He  came  with  me  across  the 
park.  He  tried  to  stop  me  from  pouncing  on  you, 
but  I  wouldn't  listen  to  him.  He  said  it  was  a  'low- 
down  stunt.'     You  know  the  way  he  talks,  Lacrimal" 

The  two  friends  stood  staring  at  the  intruder  in 
petrified  horror.  Then  without  a  word  they  quickly 
issued  from  the  cottage  and  crossed  the  garden. 
Neither  of  them  spoke  to  Gladys;  and  Mr.  Quincunx 
immdiately  returned  to  his  house  as  soon  as  he  saw 
the  American  advance  to  greet  Lacrima  with  his 
usual  friendly  nonchalance. 

The  three  went  off  down  the  lane  together;  and  the 
poor  philosopher,  staring  disconsolately  at  the  empty 
tea-cups  of  his  profaned  sanctuary,  cursed  himself, 
his  friend,  his  fate,  and  the  Powers  that  had  ap- 
pointed that  fate  from  the  beginning  of  the  world. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

UNDER-CURRENTS 

JUNE  was  drawing  to  an  end,  and  the  days, 
though  still  free  from  rain,  grew  less  and  less 
bright.  A  thin  veil  of  greyish  vapour,  which 
never  became  thick  enough  or  sank  low  enough  to 
resolve  itself  into  definite  clouds,  offered  a  perpetual 
hindrance  to  the  shining  of  the  sun.  The  sun  was 
present.  Its  influence  was  felt  in  the  warmth  of  the 
air;  but  when  it  became  visible,  it  was  only  in  the 
form  of  a  large  misty  disc,  at  which  the  weakest 
eyes  might  gaze  without  distress  or  discomfort. 

On  a  certain  evening  when  this  vaporous  obscurity 
made  it  impossible  to  ascertain  the  exact  moment  of 
the  sun's  descent  and  when  it  might  be  said  that 
afternoon  became  twilight  before  men  or  cattle  real- 
ized that  the  day  was  over,  Mr.  Wone  was  assisting 
his  son  Philip  in  planting  geraniums  in  his  back 
garden. 

The  Wone  house  was  neither  a  cottage  nor  a  villa. 
It  was  one  of  those  nondescript  and  modest  residences, 
which,  erected  in  the  mid-epoch  of  Victoria's  reign, 
when  money  was  circulating  freely  among  the  middle- 
classes,  win  a  kind  of  gentle  secondary  mellowness 
in  the  twentieth  century  by  reason  of  something 
solid  and  liberal  in  their  original  construction.  It 
stood  at  the  corner  of  the  upper  end  of  Nevilton, 
where,    beyond    the   fountain-square,    the    road    from 


31 S  WOOD  AND   STONE 

Yeoborough  takes  a  certain  angular  turn  to  the  north. 
The  garden  at  the  back  of  it,  as  with  many  of  the 
cottages  of  the  place,  was  larger  than  might  have 
been  expected,  and  over  the  low  hedge  which  sepa- 
rated it  from  the  meadows  behind,  the  long  ridge  of 
wooded  upland,  with  its  emphatic  lines  of  tall  Scotch 
firs  that  made  the  southern  boundary  of  the  valley, 
was  pleasantly  and  reassuringly  visible. 

Philip  Wone  worked  in  Yeoborough.  He  was  a 
kind  of  junior  partner  in  a  small  local  firm  of  tomb- 
stone makers  —  the  very  firm,  in  fact,  which  under 
the  direction  of  the  famous  Gideon,  had  constructed 
the  most  remarkable  monument  in  Nevilton  church- 
yard. It  was  doubtful  whether  he  would  ever  attain 
the  position  of  full  partner  in  this  concern,  for  his 
manner  of  life  was  eccentric,  and  neither  his  ways  nor 
his  appearance  were  those  of  a  youth  who  succeeds 
in  business.  He  was  a  tall  pallid  creature.  His  dark 
coarse  hair  fell  in  a  heavy  wave  over  his  white  fore- 
head, and  his  hands  were  thin  and  delicate  as  the 
hands  of  an  invalid. 

He  was  an  omnivorous  reader  and  made  incessant 
use  of  every  subscription  library  that  Yeoborough 
offered.  His  reading  was  of  two  kinds.  He  read 
romantic  novels  of  every  sort  —  good,  bad,  and  indif- 
ferent —  and  he  read  the  history  of  revolutions. 
There  can  hardly  have  been,  in  any  portion  of  the 
earth's  surface,  a  revolution  with  whose  characters 
and  incidents  Philip  was  unacquainted.  His  chief 
passion  was  for  the  great  French  Revolution,  the 
personalities  of  which  were  more  real  to  him  than 
the  majority  of  his  own  friends. 

Philip    was    by    temperament    and    conviction    an 


UNDER-CURRENTS  319 

ardent  anarchist;  not  an  anarchist  of  Mr.  Quincunx's 
mild  and  speculative  type,  but  of  a  much  more 
formidable  brand.  He  had  also  long  ago  consigned 
the  idea  of  any  Providential  interference  with  the 
sequence  of  events  upon  earth,  into  the  limbo  of 
outworn  superstitions. 

It  was  Philip's  notion,  this,  of  planting  geraniums 
in  the  back-garden.  Dressed  nearly  always  in  black, 
and  wearing  a  crimson  tie,  it  was  his  one  luxurious 
sensuality  to  place  in  his  button-hole,  as  long  as 
they  were  possibly  available,  some  specimen  or  other 
of  the  geranium  tribe,  with  a  preference  for  the  most 
flaming  varieties. 

The  Christian  Candidate  regarded  his  son  with  a 
mixture  of  contempt  and  apprehension.  He  despised 
his  lack  of  business  ability,  and  he  viewed  his  intel- 
lectual opinions  as  the  wilful  caprices  of  a  sulky  and 
disagreeable  temper. 

It  was  as  a  sort  of  pitying  concession  to  the  whim 
of  a  lunatic  that  Mr.  Wone  was  now  assisting  Philip 
in  planting  these  absurd  geraniums.  His  own  idea 
was  that  flower-gardens  ought  to  be  abolished  alto- 
gether. He  associated  them  with  gentility  and  tory- 
ism  and  private  property  in  land.  Under  the  regime 
he  would  have  liked  to  have  established,  all  decent 
householders  would  have  had  liberal  small  holdings, 
where  they  would  grow  nothing  but  vegetables.  Mr. 
Wone  liked  vegetables  and  ate  of  them  very  freely  in 
their  season.  Flowers  he  regarded  as  the  invention 
of  the  upper  classes,  so  that  their  privately  owned 
world  might  be  decorated  with  exclusive  festoons. 

"I  shall  go  round  presently,"  he  said  to  his  son, 
"and   visit  all  these  people.     I  see   no   reason   why 


320 WOOD  AND   STONE 

Taxater  and  Clavering,  as  well  as  the  two  Ander- 
sens,  should  not  make  themselves  of  considerable  use 
to  me.  I  am  tired  of  talking  to  these  Leo's  Hill 
labourers.  One  day  they  will  strike,  and  the  next 
they  ivon't.  All  they  think  of  is  their  own  quarrel 
with  Lickwit.  They  have  no  thought  of  the  general 
interest  of  the  country." 

"No  thought  of  your  interests,  you  mean,"  put  in 
the  son. 

"With  these  others  it  is  different,"  went  on  Mr. 
Wone,  oblivious  of  the  interruption.  "It  would  be 
a  real  help  to  me  if  the  more  educated  people  of  the 
place  came  out  definitely  on  my  side.  They  ought 
to  do  it.  They  know  what  this  Romer  is.  They  are 
thinking  men.  They  must  see  that  what  the  country 
wants  is  a  real  representative  of  the  people." 

"What  the  country  wants  is  a  little  more  honesty 
and  a  little  less  hypocrisy,"  remarked  the  son. 

"It  is  abominable,  this  suppression  of  our  Social 
Meeting.  You  have  heard  about  that,  I  suppose?" 
pursued  the  candidate. 

"Putting  an  end  to  your  appeals  to  Providence, 
eh?"  said  Philip,  pressing  the  earth  down  round  the 
roots  of  a  brilliant  flower. 

"I  forbid  you  to  talk  like  that,"  cried  his  father. 
"I  might  at  least  expect  that  you  would  do  some- 
thing for  me.  You  have  done  nothing,  since  my 
campaign  opened,  but  make  these  silly  remarks." 

"Why  don't  you  pray  about  it?"  jeered  the  irre- 
pressible young  man.  "Mr  Romer  has  not  suppressed 
prayer,  has  he,  as  well  as  Political  Prayer-Meetings?" 

"They  were  not  political!"  protested  the  aggrieved 
parent.      "They    were    profoundly    religious.      What 


UNDER-CURRENTS 321 

you  young  people  do  not  seem  to  realize  now-a-days 
is  that  the  soul  of  this  country  is  still  God-fearing 
and  religious-minded.  I  should  myself  have  no  hope 
at  all  for  the  success  of  this  election,  if  I  were  not 
sure  that  God  was  intending  to  make  His  hand  felt." 

"Why  don't  you  canvass  God,  then?"  muttered 
the  profane  boy. 

"I  cannot  allow  you  to  talk  to  me  in  this  way, 
Philip!"  cried  Mr.  Wone,  flinging  down  his  trowel. 
"You  know  perfectly  well  that  you  believe  as  firmly 
as  I  do,  in  your  heart.  It  is  only  that  you  think  it 
impressive  and  original  to  make  these  silly  jokes." 

"Thank  you,  father,"  replied  Philip.  "You  cer- 
tainly remove  my  doubts  with  an  invincible  argu- 
ment! But  I  assure  you  I  am  quite  serious.  Nobody 
with  any  brain  believes  in  God  in  these  days.  God 
died  about  the  same  time  as  Mr.  Gladstone." 

The  Christian  Candidate  lost  his  temper.  "I  must 
beg  you,"  he  said,  "to  keep  your  infidel  nonsense  to 
yourself.  Your  mother  and  I  are  sick  of  it!  You 
had  better  stay  in  Yeoborough,  and  not  come  home 
at  all,  if  you  can't  behave  like  an  ordinary  person 
and  keep  a  civil  tongue." 

Philip  made  no  answer  to  this  ultimatum,  but 
smiled  sardonically  and  went  on  planting  geraniums. 

But  his  father  was  loath  to  let  the  matter  drop. 

"What  would  the  state  of  the  country  be  like,  I 
wonder,"  he  continued,  "if  people  lost  their  faith  in 
the  love  of  a  merciful  Father?  It  is  only  because  we 
feel,  in  spite  of  all  appearances,  the  love  of  God  must 
triumph  in  the  end,  that  we  can  go  on  with  our  great 
movement.  The  love  of  God,  young  man,  whatever 
you  foolish  infidels  may  say,  is  at  the  bottom  of  all 


322  WOOD   AND   STONE 

attempts  to  raise  the  people  to  better  things.  Do  you 
think  I  would  labour  as  I  do  in  this  excellent  cause 
if  I  did  not  feel  that  I  had  the  loving  power  of  a 
great  Heavenly  Father  behind  me?  Why  do  I  trouble 
myself  with  politics?  Because  His  love  constrains 
me.  Why  have  I  brought  you  up  so  carefully  — 
though  to  little  profit  it  seems!  —  and  have  been  so 
considerate  to  your  mother  —  who,  as  you  know, 
isn't  always  very  cheerful?  Because  His  love  con- 
strains me.  Without  the  knowledge  that  His  love 
is  at  the  bottom  of  everything  that  happens,  do  you 
think  I  could  endure  to  live  at  all?" 

Philip  Wone  lifted  up  his  head  from  the  flower- 
border. 

"Let  me  just  tell  you  this,  father,  it  is  not  the 
love  of  God,  or  of  anyone  else,  that's  at  the  bottom 
of  our  grotesque  world.  There  is  nothing  at  the 
bottom!  The  world  goes  back  —  without  limit  or 
boundary  —  upwards  and  downwards,  and  every- 
where. It  has  no  bottom,  and  no  top  either!  It  is 
all  quite  mad  and  we  are  all  quite  mad.  Love?  Who 
knows  anything  of  love,  except  lovers  and  madmen? 
If  these  Romers  and  Lickwits  are  to  be  crushed, 
they  must  be  crushed  by  force.  By  force,  I  tell 
you!  This  love  of  an  imaginary  Heavenly  Father  has 
never  done  anything  for  the  revolution  and  never 
will!" 

Mr.  Wone,  catching  at  a  verbal  triumph,  regained 
his  placable  equanimity. 

"Because,  dear  boy,"  he  remarked,  "it  is  not 
revolution  that  we  want,  but  reconstruction.  Force 
may  destroy.     It  is  only  love  that  can  rebuild." 

No    words    can    describe    the    self-satisfied    unction 


UNDER-CURRENTS  323 

with  which  the  Christian  Candidate  pronounced  this 
oracular  saying. 

"Well,  boy,"  he  added,  "I  must  be  off.  I  want  to 
see  Taxater  and  Clavering  and  both  the  Andersens 
tonight.  I  might  see  Quincunx  too.  Not  that  I 
think  he  can  do  very  much." 

"There's  only  one  way  you'll  get  James  Andersen 
to  help  you,"  remarked  Philip,  "and  I  doubt  whether 
you'll  bring  yourself  to  use  that." 

"I  suppose  you  mean,"  returned  his  father,  "that 
Traffio  girl,  up  at  the  House.  I  have  heard  that  they 
have  been  seen  together.  But  I  thought  she  was  going 
to  marry  John  Goring." 

"No,  I  don't  mean  her,"  said  the  son.  "She's  all 
right.  She's  a  fine  girl,  and  I  am  sorry  for  her, 
whether  she  marries  Goring  or  not.  The  person  I 
mean  is  little  Ninsy  Lintot,  up  at  Wild  Pine.  She's 
the  only  one  in  this  place  who  can  get  a  civil  word 
out  of  Jim  Andersen." 

"Ninsy?"  echoed  his  father,  "but  I  thought  Ninsy 
was  dead  and  buried.  There  was  some  one  died  up 
at  Wild  Pine  last  spring,  and  I  made  sure  'twas  her." 

"That  was  her  sister  Glory,"  affirmed  Philip.  "But 
Ninsy  is  delicate,  too.  A  bad  heart,  they  say  —  too 
bad  for  any  thoughts  of  marrying.  But  she  and  Jim 
Andersen  have  been  what  you  might  call  sweethearts 
ever  since  she  was  in  short  frocks." 

"I  have  never  heard  of  this,"  said  Mr.  Wone. 

"Nor  have  many  other  people  here,  returned 
Philip,  "but  'tis  true,  none  the  less.  And  anyone 
who  wants  to  get  at  friend  James  must  go  to  him 
through  Ninsy  Lintot." 

"I  am  extremely  surprised  at  what  you  tell  me," 


324 WOOD  AXD   STONE 

said  Mr.  Wone.  "Do  you  really  mean  that  if  I  got 
this  sick  child  to  promise  me  Andersen's  help,  he 
really  would  give  it?" 

"Certainly  I  do,"  replied  Philip.  "And  what  is 
more,  he  would  bring  his  brother  with  him." 

"But  his  brother  is  thick  with  Miss  Romer.  All 
the  village  is  talking  about  them." 

"Never  mind  the  village  —  father!  You  think  too 
much  of  the  village  and  its  talk.  I  tell  you  —  Miss 
Romer  or  no  Miss  Romer  —  if  you  get  James  to  help 
you,  you  get  Luke.  I  know  something  of  the  ways  of 
those  two." 

A  look  of  foxy  cunning  crossed  the  countenance  of 
the  Christian  Candidate. 

"Do  you  happen  to  have  any  influence  with  this 
poor  Ninsy?"  he  asked  abruptly,  peering  into  his 
son's  face. 

Philip's    pale    cheeks    betrayed    no    embarrassment. 

"I  know  her,"  he  said.  "I  like  her.  I  lend  her 
books.     She  will  die  before  Christmas." 

"I  wish  you  would  go  up  and  see  her  for  me  then," 
said  Mr.  Wone  eagerly.  "It  would  be  an  excellent 
thing  if  we  could  secure  the  Andersens.  They  must 
have  a  lot  of  influence  with  the  men  they  work  with." 

Philip  glanced  across  the  rich  sloping  meadows 
which  led  up  to  the  base  of  the  wooded  ridge.  From 
where  they  stood  he  could  see  the  gloomy  clump  of 
firs  and  beeches  which  surrounded  the  little  group  of 
cottages  known  as  Wild  Pine. 

"Very  well,"  he  said.  "I  don't  mind.  But  no  more 
of  this  nonsense  about  my  not  coming  home!  I 
prefer  for  the  present"  —  and  he  gave  vent  to  rather 
an  ominous  laugh  —  "to  live  with   my  dear  parents. 


UNDER-CURRENTS 325 

But,  mind  —  I  can't  promise  anything.  These  An- 
dersens  are  queer  fellows.  One  never  knows  how 
things  will  strike  them.  However,  we  shall  see.  If 
anyone  could  persuade  our  friend  James,  it  would  be 
Ninsy." 

The  affair  being  thus  settled,  the  geraniums  were 
abandoned;  and  while  the  father  proceeded  down 
the  village  towards  the  Gables,  the  son  mounted 
the  slope  of  the  hill  in  the  direction  of  Wild  Pine. 

The  path  Philip  followed  soon  became  a  narrow 
lane  running  between  two  high  sandy  banks,  over- 
topped by  enormous  beeches.  At  all  hours,  and  on 
every  kind  of  day,  this  miniature  gorge  between  the 
wooded  fields  was  a  dark  and  forlorn  spot.  On  an 
evening  of  a  day  like  the  present  one,  it  was  nothing 
less  than  sinister.  The  sky  being  doubly  dark  above, 
dark  with  the  coming  on  of  night,  and  dark  with 
the  persistent  cloud-veil,  the  accumulated  shadows 
of  this  sombre  road  intensified  the  gloom  to  a  pitch 
of  darkness  capable  of  exciting,  in  agitated  nerves, 
an  emotion  bordering  upon  terror.  Though  the  sun 
had  barely  sunk  over  Leo's  Hill,  between  these  ivy- 
hung  banks  it  was  as  obscure  as  if  night  had  already 
fallen. 

But  the  obscurity  of  Root-Thatch  Lane  was  nothing 
to  the  sombreness  that  awaited  him  when,  arrived 
at  the  hill-top,  he  entered  Nevil's  Gully.  This  was 
a  hollow  basin  of  close-growing  beech-trees,  surrounded 
on  both  sides  by  impenetrable  thickets  of  bramble 
and  elder,  and  crossed  by  the  path  that  led  to  Wild 
Pine  cottages.  Every  geographical  district  has  its 
typical  and  representative  centre,  —  some  character- 
istic spot  which  sums  up,  as  it  were,  and  focuses,  in 


320  WOOD   AND   STONE 

limited  bounds,  qualities  and  attributes  that  are  dif- 
fused in  diverse  proportions  through  the  larger  area. 
Such  a  centre  of  the  Nevilton  district  was  the  place 
through  which  Philip  Wone  now  hurried. 

Nevil's  Gully,  however  dry  the  weather,  was  never 
free  from  an  overpowering  sense  of  dampness.  The 
soil  under  foot  was  now  no  longer  sand  but  clay,  and 
clay  of  a  particularly  adhesive  kind.  The  beech 
roots,  according  to  their  habit,  had  created  an  empty 
space  about  them  —  a  sort  of  blackened  floor,  spotted 
with  green  moss  and  pallid  fungi.  Out  of  this,  their 
cold,  smooth  trunks  emerged,  like  silent  pillars  in  the 
crypt  of  a  mausoleum. 

The  most  characteristic  thing,  as  we  have  noted, 
in  the  scenery  of  Nevilton,  is  its  prevalent  weight 
of  heavy  oppressive  moisture.  For  some  climatic  or 
geographical  reason  the  foliage  of  the  place  seems 
chillier,  damper,  and  more  filled  with  oozy  sap,  than 
in  other  localities  of  the  West  of  England.  Though 
there  may  have  been  no  rain  for  weeks  —  as  there 
had  been  none  this  particular  June  —  the  woods  in 
this  district  always  give  one  the  impression  of  re- 
taining an  inordinate  reserve  of  atmospheric  moisture. 
It  is  this  moisture,  this  ubiquitous  dampness,  that 
to  a  certain  type  of  sun-loving  nature  makes  the 
region  so  antipathetic,  so  disintegrating.  Such  per- 
sons have  constantly  the  feeling  of  being  dragged 
earthward  by  some  steady  centripedal  pull,  against 
which  they  struggle  in  vain.  Earthward  they  are 
pulled,  and  the  earth,  that  seems  waiting  to  receive 
them,  breathes  heavy  damp  breaths  of  in-drawing 
voracity,  like  the  mouth  of  some  monster  of  the 
slime. 


UNDER-CURRENTS 327 

And  if  this  is  true  of  the  general  conditions  of 
Nevilton  geography,  it  is  especially  and  accumula- 
tively true  of  Nevil's  Gully,  which,  for  some  reason 
or  other,  is  a  very  epitome  of  such  sinister  gravitation. 
If  one's  latent  mortality  feels  the  drag  of  its  clayish 
affinity  in  all  quarters  of  this  district,  in  Nevil's 
Gully  it  becomes  conscious  of  such  oppression  as  a 
definite  demonic  presence.  For  above  the  Gully 
and  above  the  cottages  to  which  the  Gully  leads,  the 
umbrageous  mass  of  entangled  leafiness  hangs,  fold 
upon  fold,  as  if  it  had  not  known  the  woodman's 
axe  since  the  foot  of  man  first  penetrated  these 
recesses.  The  beeches,  to  which  reference  has  been 
made,  are  overtopped  on  the  higher  ground  by  ashes 
and  sycamores,  and  these,  in  their  turn,  are  sur- 
mounted, on  the  highest  level  of  all,  by  colossal 
Scotch  firs,  whose  forlorn  grandeur  gives  the  cot- 
tages their  name. 

Philip  hurried,  in  the  growing  darkness,  across  the 
sepulchral  gully,  and  pushed  open  the  gate  of  the 
secluded  cattle-yard  which  was  the  original  cause  of 
this  human  hamlet.  The  houses  of  men  in  rural 
districts  follow  the  habitations  of  beasts.  Where 
cattle  and  the  stacks  that  supply  their  food  can 
conveniently  be  located,  there  must  the  dwelling  be 
of  those  whose  business  it  is  to  tend  them.  The 
convenience  of  Wild  Pine  as  a  site  for  a  spacious  and 
protected  farm-yard  was  sufficient  reason  for  the 
erection  of  a  human  shelter  for  the  hands  by  whose 
labour  such  places  are  maintained. 

He  crossed  the  yard  with  quick  steps.  A  light 
burned  in  one  of  the  sheds,  throwing  a  fitful  flicker 
upon    the    heaps    of    straw    and    the    pools    of    dung- 


328 WOOD   AND   STONE 

coloured  water.  Some  animal,  there  —  a  horse  or  a 
cow  or  a   pig  —  was  probably  giving  birth   to   young. 

From  the  farm-yard  he  emerged  into  the  cottage- 
garden,  and  stumbling  across  this,  he  knocked  at 
the  first  door  he  reached.  There  was  not  the  least 
sound  in  answer.  Dead  unbroken  stillness  reigned, 
except  for  an  intermittent  shuflQing  and  stamping 
from  the  watcher  or  the  watched  in  the  farm-yard 
behind. 

He  knocked  again,  and  even  the  sounds  in  the  yard 
ceased.  Only,  high  up  among  the  trees  above  him, 
some  large  nocturnal  bird  fluttered  heavily  from 
bough  to  bough. 

For  the  third  time  he  knocked  and  then  the  door 
of  the  next  house  opened  suddenly,  emitting  a  long 
stream  of  light  into  which  several  startled  moths 
instantly  flew.  Following  the  light  came  a  woman's 
figure. 

"If  thee  wants  Lintot,"  said  the  voice  of  this 
figure,  "thee  can't  see  'im  till  along  of  most  an  hour. 
He  be  tending  a  terrible  sick  beast." 

"I  want  to  see  Ninsy,"  shouted  Philip,  knocking 
again  on  the  closed  door. 

"Then  thee  must  walk  in  and  have  done  with  it," 
returned  the  woman.  "The  maid  be  laid  up  with 
heart-spasms  again  and  can  open  no  doors  this  night, 
not  if  the  Lord  his  own  self  were  hammering." 

Philip  boldly  followed  her  advice  and  entered  the 
cottage,  closing  the  door  behind  him.  A  faint  voice 
from  a  room  at  the  back  asked  him  what  he  wanted 
and  who  he  was. 

"It  is  Philip,"  he  answered,  "may  I  come  in  and 
see  you,  Ninsy?     It  is  Philip  —  Philip  Wone." 


UNDER-CURRENTS 329 

He  gathered  from  the  girl's  low-voiced  murmur  that 
he  was  welcome,  and  crossing  the  kitchen  he  opened 
the  door  of  the  further  room. 

He  found  Ninsy  dressed  and  smiling,  but  lying  in 
complete  prostration  upon  a  low  horse-hair  sofa.  He 
closed  the  door,  and  moving  a  chair  to  her  side,  sat 
down  in  silence,  gazing  upon  her  wistfully  with  his 
great  melancholy  eyes. 

"Don't  look  so  peaked  and  pining,  Philip-boy," 
she  said,  laying  her  white  hand  upon  his  and  smiling 
into  his  face.  '"Tis  only  the  old  trouble.  'Tis 
nothing  more  than  what  I  expect.  I  shall  be  about 
again  tomorrow  or  the  day  after.  But  I  be  real  glad 
to  see  'ee  here!  Father's  biding  down  in  the  yard, 
and  'tis  a  lonesome  place  to  be  laid-up  in,  this  poor 
old  house." 

Ninsy  looked  exquisitely  fragile  and  slender,  lying 
back  in  this  tender  helplessness,  her  chestnut-coloured 
hair  all  loose  over  her  pillow.  Philip  was  filled  with 
a  flood  of  romantic  emotion.  The  girl  had  always 
attracted  him  but  never  so  much  as  now.  It  was 
one  of  his  ingrained  peculiarities  to  find  hurt  and 
unhappy  people  more  engaging  than  healthy  and 
contented  ones.  He  almost  wished  Ninsy  would 
stop  smiling  and  chattering  so  pleasantly.  It  only 
needed  that  she  should  shed  tears,  to  turn  the  young 
man's  commiseration  into  passion. 

But  Ninsy  did  not  shed  tears.  She  continued 
chatting  to  him  in  the  most  cheerful  vein.  It  was 
only  by  the  faintest  shadow  that  crossed  her  face 
at  intervals,  that  one  could  have  known  that  any- 
thing serious  was  the  matter  with  her.  She  spoke 
of    the   books   he   had   lent   her.      She   spoke   of    the 


330  WOOD  AND   STONE 

probable  break-up  of  the  weather.  She  talked  of 
Lacrima  TraflSo. 

"I  think,"  she  said,  speaking  with  extreme  earnest- 
ness, "the  young  foreign  lady  is  lovely  to  look  at. 
I  hope  she'll  be  happy  in  this  marriage.  They  do  say, 
poor  dear,  she  is  being  driven  to  it.  But  with  the 
gentry  you  never  know.  They  aren't  like  us.  Father 
says  they  have  all  their  marriages  thought  out  for 
them,  same  as  royalty.  I  wonder  who  Miss  Gladys 
will  marry  after  all!  Father  has  met  her  several 
times  lately,  walking  with  that  American  gentleman." 

"Has  Jim  Andersen  been  up  to  see  you,  Ninsy," 
put  in  Mr.  Wone's  emissary,  "since  this  last  attack 
of  yours?" 

The  fact  that  this  question  left  his  lips  simultane- 
ously with  a  rising  current  of  emotion  in  his  heart 
towards  her  is  a  proof  of  the  fantastic  complication 
of  feeling  in  the  young  anarchist. 

He  fretted  and  chafed  under  the  stream  of  her 
gentle  impersonal  talk.  He  longed  to  rouse  in  her 
some  definite  agitation,  even  though  it  meant  the 
introduction  of  his  rival's  image.  The  fact  that  such 
agitation  was  likely  to  be  a  shock  to  her  did  not 
weigh  with  him.  Objective  consideration  for  people's 
bodily  health  was  not  one  of  Philip's  weaknesses. 
His  experiment  met  with  complete  success.  At  the 
mention  of  James  Andersen's  name  a  scarlet  flush 
came  into  the  girl's  cheeks. 

"No  —  yes  —  no!"  she  answered  stammering. 
"That  is  —  I  mean  —  not  since  I  have  been  ill.  But 
before  —  several  times  —  lately.  Why  do  you  look 
at  me  like  that,  Philip?  You're  not  angry  with  me, 
are  you?" 


UNDER-CURRENTS 331 

Philip's  mind  was  a  confused  arena  of  contradic- 
tory emotions.  Among  the  rest,  two  stood  out  and 
asserted  themselves  —  this  unpardonable  and  re- 
morseless desire  to  trouble  her,  to  embarrass  her,  to 
make  her  blush  yet  more  deeply  —  and  a  strange 
wild  longing  to  be  himself  as  ill  as  she  was,  and  of 
the  same  disease,  so  that  they  might  die  together! 

"My  father  wanted  me  to  ask  you,"  he  blurted 
out,  "whether  you  would  use  your  influence  over 
Jim  to  get  him  to  help  in  this  election  business.  I 
told  my  father  Jim  would  do  anything  you  asked 
him." 

The  girl's  poor  cheeks  burned  more  deeply  than 
ever  at  this. 

"I  wish  you  hadn't  told  him  that,  Philip,"  she 
said.  "I  wish  you  hadn't!  You  know  very  well  I 
have  no  more  influence  over  James  than  anyone  else 
has.  It  was  unkind  of  you  to  tell  him  that!  Now 
I  am  afraid  he'll  be  disappointed.  For  I  shall  never 
dare  to  worry  Jim  about  a  thing  like  that.  You  don't 
take   any   interest   in   this  election,   Philip,   do  you.'*" 

From  the  tone  of  this  last  remark  the  young  anar- 
chist gathered  the  intimation  that  Andersen  had  been 
talking  about  the  affair  to  his  little  friend  and  had 
been  expressing  opinions  derogatory  to  Mr.  Wone's 
campaign.  She  would  hardly  have  spoken  of  so  lively 
a  local  event  in  such  a  tone  of  weary  disparagement, 
if  some  masculine  philosopher  had  not  been  "putting 
ideas  into  her  head." 

"You  ought  to  make  him  join  in,"  continued 
Philip.  "He  has  such  influence  down  at  the  works. 
It  would  be  a  great  help  to  father.  We  labouring 
people  ought  to  stand  by  one  another,  you  know." 


332 WOOD  AND  STONE 

"But  I  thought  —  I  thought — ,"  stammered  poor 
Ninsy,  pushing  back  her  hair  from  her  forehead, 
"that  you  had  quite  different  opinions  from  Mr. 
Wone." 

"Damn  my  opinions!"  cried  the  excited  youth. 
"What  do  my  opinions  matter?  We  are  talking  of 
Jim  Andersen.  Why  doesn't  he  join  in  with  the 
other  men  and  help  father  in  getting  up  the 
strike?" 

"He  —  he  doesn't  believe  in  strikes,"  murmured 
the  girl  feebly. 

"Why  doesn't  he!"  cried  the  youth.  "Does  he 
think  himself  different,  then,  from  the  rest  of  us, 
because  old  Gideon  married  the  daughter  of  a  vicar? 
He  ought  to  be  told  that  he  is  a  traitor  to  his  class. 
Yes  —  a  traitor  —  a  turn-coat  —  a  black-leg!  That's 
what  he  is  —  if  he  won't  come  in.  A  black- 
leg!" 

They  were  interrupted  by  a  sharp  knock  at  the 
outer  door.  The  girl  raised  herself  on  her  elbow  and 
became  distressingly  agitated. 

"Oh,  I  believe  that  is  Jim,"  she  cried.  "What  shall 
I  do?  He  won't  like  to  find  you  here  alone  with  me 
like  this.     What  a  dreadful  accident!" 

Philip  without  a  moment's  delay  went  to  the  door 
and  opened  it.  Yes,  the  visitor  was  James  Andersen. 
The  two  men  looked  at  one  another  in  silence.  James 
was  the  first  to  speak. 

"So  you  are  looking  after  our  invalid?"  he  said. 
"I  only  heard  this  afternoon  that  she  was  bad 
again." 

He  did  not  wait  for  the  other's  response,  but 
pushing  past  him  went  straight  into  Ninsy's  room. 


UNDER-CURRENTS 333 

"Poor  child!"  he  said,  "Poor  dear  little  girl! 
Why  didn't  you  send  a  message  to  me?  I  saw  your 
father  in  the  yard  and  he  told  me  to  come  on  in. 
How  are  you?  Why  aren't  you  in  bed?  I'm  sure 
you  ought  to  be  in  bed,  and  not  talking  to  such  an 
exciting  person  as  our  friend  Philip." 

"She  won't  be  talking  to  me  much  longer,"  threw 
in  that  youth,  following  his  rival  to  the  side  of  the 
girl's  sofa.  "I  only  came  to  ask  her  to  do  something 
for  us  in  this  election.  She  will  tell  you  what  I  mean. 
Ask  her  to  tell  you.  Don't  forget!  Good-bye 
Ninsy,"  and  he  held  out  his  hand  with  a  searching 
look  into  the  girl's  face,  a  look  at  once  wistfully  en- 
treating and  fiercely  reproachful. 

She  took  his  hand.  "Good  night,  Philip,"  she  said. 
"Think  kindly  of  me,  and  think  —  "  this  was  said 
in  a  voice  so  low  that  only  the  young  man  could 
hear  —  "think  kindly  of  Jim.     Good  night!" 

He  nodded  to  Andersen  and  went  oS,  a  sombre 
dangerous  expression  clouding  the  glance  he  threw 
upon  the  clock  in  the  corner. 

"You  pay  late  visits,  James  Andersen,"  he  called 
back,  as  he  let  himself  out  of  the  cottage-door. 

Left  alone  with  Ninsy,  the  stone-carver  possessed 
himself  of  the  seat  vacated  by  the  angry  youth. 
The  girl  remained  quiet  and  motionless,  her  hands 
crossed  on  her  lap  and  her  eyes  closed. 

"Poor  child!"  he  murmured,  in  a  voice  of  tender 
and  affectionate  pity.  "I  cannot  bear  to  see  you  like 
this.  It  almost  gives  me  a  sense  of  shame  —  my  being 
so  strong  and  well  —  and  you  so  delicate.  But  you 
will  be  better  soon,  won't  you?  And  we  will  go  for 
some  of  our  old  walks  together." 


334  AYOOD   AND   STONE 

Ninsy's  mouth  twitched  a  little,  and  big  tears 
forced  their  way  through  her  tightly  shut  eyelids, 

"When  your  father  comes  in,"  he  went  on,  "you 
must  let  me  help  him  carry  you  upstairs.  And  I 
am  sure  you  had  better  have  the  doctor  tomorrow 
if  you  are  not  better.  Won't  you  let  me  go  to  Yeo- 
borough  for  him  tonight.?" 

Ninsy  suddenly  struck  the  side  of  her  sofa  with 
her  clenched  hand.  "I  don't  want  the  doctor!" 
she  burst  out,  "and  I  don't  want  to  get  better.  I 
want  to  end  it  all  —  that's  what  I  want !  I  want  to 
end  it  all." 

Andersen  made  a  movement  as  if  to  caress  her,  but 
she  turned  her  head  away. 

"I  am  sick  and  tired  of  it  all,"  she  moaned.  "I 
wish  I  were  dead.     Oh,  I  wish  I  were  dead!" 

The  stone-carver  knelt  down  by  her  side.  "Ninsy," 
her  murmured,  "Ninsy,  my  child,  my  friend,  what  is 
it.''     Tell  me  what  it  is." 

But  the  girl  only  went  on,  in  a  low  soft  wail,  "I 
knew  it  would  come  to  this.  I  knew  it.  I  knew  it. 
Oh,  why  was  I  ever  born !  W^hy  wasn't  it  me,  and  not 
Glory,  who  died!     I  shall  die.     I  want  to  die!" 

Andersen  rose  to  his  feet.  "Ninsy!"  he  said  in  a 
stern  altered  voice.  "Stop  this  at  once  —  or  I  shall 
go  straight  away  and  call  your  father!" 

He  assumed  an  air  and  tone  as  if  quieting  a  petu- 
lant infant.  It  had  its  effect  upon  her.  She  swal- 
lowed down  her  rising  fit  of  sobs  and  looked  up  at 
him  with  great  frightened  tearful  eyes. 

"Now,  child,"  he  said,  once  more  seating  himself, 
and  this  time  successfully  taking  possession  of  a  sub- 
missive little  hand,   "tell  me  what  all  this  is  about. 


UNDER-CURRENTS 335 

Tell  me  everything."  He  bent  down  and  imprinted 
a  kiss  upon  her  cold  wet  cheek. 

"It  is — "  she  stammered,  "it  is  that  I  think  you 
are  fond  of  that  Italian  girl."  She  hid  her  face  in  a 
fold  of  her  rich  auburn  hair  and  went  on.  "They  do 
tell  me  you  walk  with  her  when  your  brother  goes 
with  Miss  Gladys.  Don't  be  angry  with  me,  Jim. 
I  know  I  have  no  right  to  say  these  things.  I  know 
I  have  no  claim,  no  power  over  you.  But  we  did 
keep  company  once,  Jim,  didn't  us?  And  it  do  stab 
my  heart,  —  to  hear  them  tell  of  you  and  she!  " 

James  Andersen  looked  frowningly  at  the  window. 

The  curtains  were  not  drawn;  and  a  dark  ash-branch 
stretched  itself  across  the  casement  like  an  extended 
threatening  arm.  Its  form  was  made  visible  by  a  gap 
in  the  surrounding  trees,  through  which  a  little  cluster 
of  stars  faintly  twinkled.     The  cloud  veil  had  melted. 

"What  a  world  this  is!"  the  stone-carver  thought 
to  himself.  His  tone  when  he  spoke  was  irritable  and 
aggrieved. 

"How  silly  you  are,  Ninsy  —  with  your  fancies! 
A  man  can't  be  civil  to  a  poor  lonesome  foreign 
wench,  without  your  girding  at  him  as  if  he  had  done 
something  wrong!  Of  course  I  speak  to  Miss  Traffic 
and  walk  with  her  too.  What  else  do  you  expect 
when  the  poor  thing  is  left  lonesome  on  my  hands, 
with  Luke  and  Miss  Gladys  amusing  themselves? 
But  you  needn't  worry,"  he  added,  with  a  certain 
unrestrained  bitterness.  "It's  only  when  Luke  and 
his  young  lady  are  together  that  she  and  I  ever 
meet,  and  I  don't  think  they'll  often  be  together 
now." 

Ninsy  looked  at  him  with  questioning  eyes. 


330  WOOD   AND   STONE 

"He  and  she  have  quarrelled,"  he  said  curtly. 

"Over  the  American?"  asked  the  girl. 

"Over  the  American." 

"And  you  won't  be  walking  with  that  foreigner 
any  more?" 

"I  shan't  be  walking  with  her  any  more." 

Ninsy  sank  back  on  her  pillow  with  a  sigh  of  in- 
effable relief.  Had  she  been  a  Catholic  she  would 
have  crossed  herself  devoutly.  As  it  was  she  turned 
her  head  smilingly  towards  him  and  extended  her 
arms.  "Kiss  me,"  she  pleaded.  He  bent  down,  and 
she  embraced  him  with  passionate  warmth. 

"Then  we  belong  to  each  other  again,  just  the  same 
as  before,"  she  said. 

"Just  the  same  as  before." 

"Oh,  I  wish  that  cruel  doctor  hadn't  told  me  I 
mustn't  marry.  He  told  father  it  would  kill  me,  and 
the  other  one  who  came  said  the  same  thing.  But 
wouldn't  it  be  lovely  if  you  and  I,  Jim — " 

She  stopped  suddenly,  catching  a  glimpse  of  his 
face.     Her  happiness  was  gone  in  a  moment. 

"You  don't  love  me.  Oh,  you  don't  love  me!  I 
know  it.  I  have  known  it  for  many  weeks!  That  girl 
has  poisoned  you  against  me  —  the  wicked,  wicked 
thing!  It's  no  use  denying  it.  I  know  it.  I  feel  it,  — 
oh,  how  can  I  bear  it!     How  can  I  bear  it!" 

She  shut  her  eyes  once  more  and  lay  miserable  and 
silent.  The  wood-carver  looked  gloomily  out  of  the 
window.  The  cluster  of  stars  now  assumed  a  shape 
well-known  to  him.  It  was  Orion's  Belt.  His 
thoughts  swept  sadly  over  the  field  of  destiny. 

"What  a  world  it  is!"  he  said  to  himself.  "There 
is  that  boy  Philip  gone  with  a  tragic  heart  because 


UNDER-CURRENTS 337 

his  girl  loves  me.  And  I  — I  have  to  wait  and  wait 
in  helplessness,  and  see  the  other  —  the  one  I  care  for  — 
driven  into  madness.  And  she  cares  not  a  straw  for 
me,  who  could  help  her,  and  only  cares  for  that  poor 
fool  who  cannot  lift  a  finger.  And  meanwhile, 
Orion's  Belt  looks  contemptuously  down  upon  us 
all!  Ninsy  is  pretty  well  right.  The  lucky  people 
are  the  people  who  are  safe  out  of  it  —  the  people 
that  Orion's  Belt  cannot  vex  any  more!" 

He  rose  to  his  feet.  "Well,  child,"  he  said,  "I 
think  I'll  be  going.  It's  no  use  our  plaguing  one 
another  any  further  tonight.  Things  will  right  them- 
selves, little  one.  Things  will  right  themselves!  Its 
a  crazy  world  —  but  the  story  isn't  finished  yet. 

"Don't  you  worry  about  it,"  he  added  gently, 
bending  over  her  and  pushing  the  hair  back  from  her 
forehead.  "Your  old  James  hasn't  deserted  you  yet. 
He  loves  you  better  than  you  think  —  better  than 
he  knows  himself  perhaps!" 

The  girl  seized  the  hand  that  caressed  her  and 
pressed  it  against  her  lips.  Her  breast  rose  and  fell 
in  quick  troubled  breathing. 

"Come  again  soon,"  she  said,  and  then,  with  a  wan 
smile,  "if  you  care  to." 

Their  eyes  met  in  a  long  perplexed  clinging  fare- 
well.    He  was  the  first  to  break  the  tension. 

"Good-night,  child,"  he  said,  and  turning  away, 
left  the  room  without  looking  back. 

While  these  events  were  occurring  at  Wild  Pine, 
in  the  diplomatist's  study  at  the  Gables  Mr.  Wone 
was  expounding  to  Mr.  Taxater  the  objects  and  pur- 
poses of  his  political  campaign. 

Mrs.  Wotnot,  leaner  and  more  taciturn  than  ever. 


338 WOOD   AND   STONE 

had  just  produced  for  the  refreshment  of  the  visitor 
a  bottle  of  moderately  good  burgundy.  Mr,  Taxater 
had  demanded  "a  little  wine,"  in  the  large  general 
manner  which  his  housekeeper  always  interpreted  as 
a  request  for  something  short  of  the  very  best.  It 
was  clear  that  for  the  treasures  of  innermost  wine- 
cellars  Mr.  Wone  was  not  among  the  privileged. 

The  defender  of  the  papacy  had  placed  his  visitor 
so  that  the  light  of  the  lamp  fell  upon  his  perspiring 
brow,  upon  his  watery  blue  eyes,  and  upon  his  droop- 
ing, sandy-coloured  moustache.  Mr.  Taxater  himself 
was  protected  by  a  carefully  arranged  screen,  out  of 
the  shadow  of  which  the  Mephistophelian  sanctity  of 
his  patient  profile  loomed  forth,  vague  and  indis- 
tinct. 

Mr.  Wone's  mission  was  in  his  own  mind  tending 
rapidly  to  a  satisfactory  conclusion.  The  theologian 
had  heard  him  with  so  much  attention,  had  asked 
such  searching  and  practical  questions,  had  shown 
such  sympathetic  interest  in  all  the  convolutions  and 
entanglements  of  the  political  situation,  that  Mr. 
Wone  began  to  reproach  himself  for  not  having  made 
use  of  such  a  capable  ally  earlier  in  the  day. 

"It  is,"  he  was  saying,  "on  the  general  grounds  of 
common  Christian  duty  that  I  ask  your  help.  We 
who  recognize  the  importance  of  religion  would  be 
false  to  our  belief  if  we  did  not  join  together  to  de- 
feat so  ungodly  and  worldly  a  candidate  as  this 
Romer  turns  out  to  be." 

It  must  be  confessed  that  in  his  heart  of  hearts 
Mr.  Wone  regarded  Roman  Catholics  as  far  more 
dangerous  to  the  community  than  anarchists  or 
infidels,    but    he    prided    himself    upon    a    discretion 


UNDER-CURRENTS 339 

worthy  of  apostolic  inspiration  in  thus  seeking  to 
divide  and  set  asunder  the  enemies  of  evangelical 
truth.  He  found  the  papist  so  intelligent  a  listener, — 
that  hardly  one  secret  of  his  political  designs  remained 
unshared  between  them. 

"The  socialism,"  he  finally  remarked,  "which  you 
and  I  are  interested  in,  is  Christian  Socialism.  You 
may  be  sure  that  in  nothing  I  do  or  say  there  will  be 
found  the  least  tincture  of  this  deplorable  modern 
materialism.  My  own  feeling  is  that  the  closer  our 
efforts  for  the  uplifting  of  the  people  are  founded 
upon  biblical  doctrines  the  more  triumphant  their 
success  will  be.  It  is  the  ethical  aspect  of  this  great 
struggle  for  popular  rights  which  I  hold  most  near 
my  heart.  I  wish  to  take  my  place  in  Parliament 
as  representing  not  merely  the  intelligence  of  this 
constituency  but  its  moral  and  spiritual  needs  —  its 
soul,  in  fact,  Mr.  Taxater.  There  is  no  animosity 
in  my  campaign.  I  am  scrupulous  about  that.  I  am 
ready,  always  ready,  to  do  our  opponents  justice. 
But  when  they  appeal  to  the  material  needs  of  the 
country,  I  appeal  to  its  higher  requirements  —  to  its 
soul,  in  other  words.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  I  am 
so  glad  to  welcome  really  intelligent  and  highly  edu- 
cated men,  like  yourself.  We  who  take  this  loftier 
view  must  of  course  make  use  of  many  less  admirable 
methods.  I  do  so  myself.  But  it  is  for  us  to  keep 
the  higher,  the  more  ethical  considerations,  always  in 
sight. 

"As  I  was  saying  to  my  son,  this  very  evening,  the 
grand  thing  for  us  all  to  remember  is  that  it  is  only 
on  the  assumption  of  Divine  Love  being  at  the  bot- 
tom of  every  confusion  that  we  can  go  to  work  at  all. 


340 WOOD   AND   STONE 

The  Tory  party  refuse  to  make  this  assumption. 
They  refuse  to  recognize  the  ethical  substratum  of 
the  world.  They  treat  politics  as  if  they  were  a 
matter  of  merely  imperial  or  patriotic  importance. 
In  my  view  politics  and  religion  should  go  hand  in 
hand.  In  the  true  democracy  which  I  aim  at  estab- 
lishing, all  these  secular  theories  —  evidently  due  to 
the  direct  action  of  the  Devil  —  such  as  Free  Love 
and  the  destruction  of  the  family  —  will  not  be 
tolerated  for  a  moment. 

"Let  no  one  think,"  —  and  Mr.  Wone  swallowed  a 
mouthful  of  wine  with  a  gurgling  sound,  —  "that 
because  we  attack  capitalism  and  large  estates, 
we  have  any  wish  to  interfere  with  the  sacredness  of 
the  home.  There  are,  I  regret  to  say,  among  some 
of  our  artizans,  wild  and  dangerous  theories  of  this 
kind,  but  I  have  always  firmly  discountenanced  them 
and  I  always  will.  That  is  why,  if  I  may  say  so, 
I  am  so  well  adapted  to  represent  this  district.  I 
have  the  support  of  the  large  number  of  Liberal- 
minded  tradesmen  who  would  deeply  regret  the  intro- 
duction of  such  immoral  theories  into  our  movement. 
They  hold,  as  I  hold,  that  this  unhappy  tendency  to 
atheistic  speculation  among  our  working-classes  is 
one  of  the  gravest  dangers  to  the  country.  They  hold, 
as  I  hold,  that  the  cynical  free  thought  of  the  Tory 
party  is  best  encountered,  not  by  the  equally  de- 
plorable cynicism  of  certain  labor-leaders,  but  by  the 
high  Christian  standards  of  men  like  —  like  our- 
selves, Mr.  Taxater." 

He  paused  for  a  moment  and  drew  his  hand,  which 
certainly  resembled  the  hand  of  an  ethical-minded 
dispenser   of   sugar   rather   than   that   of   an   immoral 


UNDER-CURRENTS 341 

manual  labourer,  across  his  damp  forehead.  Then 
he  began  again. 

"Another  reason  which  seems  to  point  to  me,  in 
quite  a  providential  manner,  as  the  candidate  for 
this  district,  is  the  fact  that  I  was  born  in  Nevilton 
and  that  my  father  was  born  here  before  me. 

"'Wone'  is  one  of  the  oldest  names  in  the  church 
Register.  There  were  Wones  in  Nevilton  in  the  days 
of  the  Norman  Conquest.  I  love  the  place  —  Mr. 
Taxater  —  and  I  believe  I  may  say  that  the  place 
loves  me.  I  am  in  harmony  with  it,  you  know. 
I  understand  its  people.  I  understand  their  little 
weaknesses.  Some  of  these,  though  you  may  not 
believe  it,  I  even  may  say  I  share. 

"  I  love  this  beautiful  scenery,  these  luscious  fields, 
these  admirable  woods.  I  love  to  think  of  them  as 
belonging  to  us  —  to  the  people  who  live  among  them 
—  I  love  the  voice  of  the  doves  in  our  dear  trees, 
Mr.  Taxater.  I  love  the  cattle  in  the  meadows.  I 
love  the  vegetables  in  the  gardens.  And  I  love  to 
think"  —  here  Mr.  Wone  finished  his  glass,  and 
drew  the  back  of  his  hand  across  his  mouth  —  "I 
love  to  think  of  these  good  gifts  of  the  Heavenly 
Father  as  being  the  expression  of  His  divine  bounty. 
Yes,  if  anywhere  in  our  revered  country  atheism  and 
immorality  are  condemned  by  nature  herself,  it  is  in 
Nevilton.  The  fields  of  Nevilton  are  like  the  fields 
of  Canaan,  they  are  full  of  the  goodness  of  the  Lord!" 

"Your  emotions,"  said  the  Papal  Apologist  at  last, 
as  his  companion  paused  breathless,  "do  you  credit, 
my  dear  Sir.  I  certainly  hold  with  you  that  it  is 
important  to  counteract  the  influence  of  Free-Think- 
ers." 


342 WOOD   AND   STONE 

"But  the  love  of  God,  Mr.  Taxater!"  cried  the 
other,  leaning  forward  and  crossing  his  hands  over 
his  knees.  "We  must  not  only  refute,  we  must  con- 
struct." Mr.  Wone  had  never  felt  in  higher  feather. 
Here  was  a  man  capable  of  really  doing  him  justice. 
He  wished  his  recalcitrant  son  were  present! 

"Construct  —  that  is  what  I  always  say,"  he  re- 
peated. "We  must  be  creative  and  constructive  in 
our  movement,  and  fix  it  firmly  upon  the  Only  Foun- 
dation." 

He  surveyed  through  the  window  the  expansive 
heavens;  and  his  glance  encountered  the  same  prom- 
inent constellation,  which,  at  that  very  moment, 
but  with  different  emotions,  the  agitated  stone- 
carver  was  contemplating  from  the  cottage  at  Wild 
Pine. 

"You  are  undoubtedly  correct,  Mr.  Wone,"  said 
his  host  gravely,  using  a  tone  he  might  have  used 
if  his  interlocutor  had  been  recommending  him  to  buy 
cheese.  "You  are  undoubtedly  correct  in  finding 
the  basis  of  the  system  of  things  in  love.  It  is  no 
more  than  what  the  Saints  have  always  taught.  I 
am  also  profoundly  at  one  with  you  in  your  objection 
to  Free  Love.  Love  and  Free  Love  are  contradictory 
categories.  They  might  even  be  called  antinomies. 
There  is  no  synthesis  which  reconciles  them." 

Mr.  Wone  had  not  the  remotest  idea  what  any  of 
these  words  meant,  but  he  felt  flattered  to  the 
depths  of  his  being.  It  was  clear  that  he  had  been 
led  to  utter  some  profound  philosophical  maxim. 
He  once  more  wished  from  his  heart  that  his  son 
could  hear  this  conversation! 

"Well,  Mr.  Taxater,"   he  said,   "I  must  now  leave 


UNDER-CURRENTS 343 

you.  I  have  other  distinguished  gentlemen  to  call  upon 
before  I  retire.  But  I  thank  you  for  your  promised 
support. 

"It  would  be  better,  perhaps"  —  here  he  lowered 
his  voice  and  looked  jocose  and  crafty  —  "not  to 
refer  to  our  little  conversation.  It  might  be  mis- 
understood. There  is  a  certain  prejudice,  you  know 
—  unjustifiable,  of  course,  but  unfortunately,  very 
prevalent,  which  makes  it  wiser  —  but  I  need  say  no 
more.  Good-bye,  Mr.  Taxater  —  good  night,  sir, 
good  night!" 

And  he  bowed  himself  off  and  proceeded  up  the 
street  to  find  the  next  victim  of  his  evangelical  dis- 
cretion. 

As  soon  as  he  had  gone,  Mr.  Taxater  summoned  his 
housekeeper. 

"The  next  time  that  person  comes,"  he  said,  "will 
you  explain  to  him,  very  politely,  that  I  have  been 
called  to  London?  If  this  seems  improbable,  or  if 
he  has  caught  a  glimpse  of  me  through  the  window, 
will  you  please  explain  to  him  that  I  am  engaged 
upon  a  very  absorbing  literary  work." 

Mrs.  Wotnot  nodded.  "I  kept  my  eyes  open  yes- 
terday," the  old  woman  remarked,  in  the  manner  of 
some  veteran  conspirator  in  the  service  of  a  Privy 
Counsellor. 

"As  you  happened  to  be  looking  for  laurel-leaves, 
I  suppose?"  said  Mr.  Taxater,  drawing  the  red 
curtains  across  the  window,  with  his  expressive 
episcopal  hand.  "For  laurel-leaves,  Mrs.  Wotnot,  to 
flavour  that  excellent  custard?" 

The  old  woman  nodded.  "And  you  saw?"  pursued 
her  master. 


344 WOOD  AND  STONE 

"I  saw  Mr.  Luke  Andersen  and  Miss  Gladys 
Romer." 

"Were  they  as  happy  as  usual  —  these  young 
people,"  asked  the  theologian  mildly,  "or  were  they 
— otherwise?" 

"They  were  very  much  what  you  are  pleased  to 
call  otherwise,"  answered  the  old  lady. 

"Quarrelling  in  fact?"  suggested  the  diplomat, 
seating  himself  deliberately  in  his  arm-chair. 

"Miss  Gladys  was  crying  and  Mr.  Luke  was 
laughing." 

The  Papal  Apologist  waved  his  hand.  "Thank 
you,  Mrs.  Wotnot,  thank  you.  These  things  will 
happen,  won't  they  —  even  in  Nevilton?  Mr.  Luke 
laughing,  and  Miss  Gladys  crying?  Your  laurel- 
leaves  were  very  well  chosen,  my  friend.  Let  me 
have  the  rest  of  that  custard  to-night!  I  hope  you 
have  not  brought  back  your  rheumatism,  Mrs.  Wot- 
not, by  going  so  far?" 

The  housekeeper  shook  her  head  and  retired  to 
prepare  supper. 

Mr.  Taxater  took  up  the  book  by  his  side  and 
opened  it  thoughtfully.  It  was  the  final  volume  of 
the  collected  works  of  Joseph  de  Maistre. 

Mr.  Wone  had  not  advanced  far  in  the  direction  of 
the  church,  when  he  overtook  Vennie  Seldom  walking 
slowly,  with  down-cast  head,   in  the  same  direction. 

Vennie  had  just  passed  an  uncomfortable  hour 
with  her  mother,  who  had  been  growing,  during  the 
recent  days,  more  and  more  fretful  and  suspicious. 
It  was  partly  to  allay  these  suspicions  and  partly 
to  escape  from  the  maternal  atmosphere  that  she  had 
decided   to   be   present   that   evening   at   the   weekly 


UNDER-CURRENTS 345 

choir-practice,  a  function  that  she  had  found  herself 
lately  beginning  to  neglect.  Mr.  Wone  had  forgotten 
the  choir-practice.  It  would  interfere,  he  was  afraid, 
with  his  desired  interview  with  Mr.  Clavering.  Ven- 
nie  assured  him  that  the  clergyman's  presence  was 
not  essential  at  these  times. 

"He  is  not  musical,  you  know.  He  only  walks  up 
and  down  the  aisle  and  confuses  things.  Everybody 
will  be  glad  if  you  take  him  away." 

She  was  a  little  surprised  at  herself,  even  as  she 
spoke.  To  depreciate  her  best  friend  in  this  flippant 
way,  and  to  such  a  person,  showed  that  her  nerves 
were  abnormally  strained, 

Mr.  Wone  did  not  miss  the  unusual  tone.  He  had 
never  been  on  anything  but  very  distant  terms  with 
Miss  Seldom,  and  his  vanity  was  hugely  delighted  by 
this  new  manner. 

"I  am  coming  into  my  own,"  he  thought  to  him- 
self. "My  abilities  are  being  recognized  at  last,  by 
all  these  exclusive  people." 

"I  hope,"  he  said,  tentatively,  "that  you  and  your 
dear  mother  are  on  our  side  in  this  great  national 
struggle.  I  have  just  been  to  see  Mr.  Taxater  and, 
he  has  promised  me  his  energetic  support," 

"Has  he?"  said  Vennie  in  rather  a  startled  voice. 
"That  surprises  me  —  a  little.  I  know  he  does  not 
admire  Mr.  Romer;    but  I  thought " 

"O  he  is  with  us  —  heart  and  soul  with  us!"  re- 
peated the  triumphant  Noncomformist,  "I  am  glad 
I  went  to  him.  Many  of  us  would  have  been  too 
narrow-minded  to  enter  his  house,  seeing  he  is  a 
papist.     But  I  am  free  from  such  bigotry." 

"And  you  hope  to  convert  Mr.  Clavering,  too?" 


346 AYOOD  AND   STONE 

"Certainly;  that  is  what  I  intend.  But  I  believe 
our  excellent  \^car  needs  no  conversion.  I  have 
often  heard  him  speak  —  at  the  Social  Meeting,  you 
know  —  and  I  assure  you  he  is  a  true  friend  of  the 
working-classes.  I  only  wish  more  of  his  kind  were 
like  him." 

"Mr.  Clavering  is  too  changeable,"  remarked  Ven- 
nie,  hardly  knowing  what  she  said.  "  His  moods  alter 
from  day  to  day." 

"But  you  yourself,  dear  Miss  Seldom,"  the  candi- 
date went  on.  "You  yourself  are,  I  think,  entirely 
with  us.?" 

"I  really  don't  know,"  she  answered.  "My  in- 
terests do  not  lie  in  these  directions.  I  sometimes 
doubt  whether  it  greatly  matters,  one  way  or  the 
other." 

"Whether  it  matters?"  cried  Mr.  Wone,  inhaling 
the  night-air  with  a  sigh  of  protestation.  "Surely, 
you  do  not  take  that  indifferent  and  thoughtless  atti- 
tude? A  young  lady  of  your  education  —  of  your 
religious  feeling!  Surely,  you  must  feel  that  it 
matters  profoundly!  As  we  walk  here  together, 
through  this  embalmed  air,  full  of  so  many  agreeable 
scents,  surely  you  must  feel  that  a  good  and  great 
God  is  making  his  power  known  at  last,  known  and 
respected,  through  the  poor  means  of  our  conse- 
crated efforts?  Forgive  my  speaking  so  freely  to  one 
of  your  position;  but  it  seems  to  me  that  you  must  — 
you  at  least  —  be  on  our  side,  simply  because  what 
we  are  aiming  at  is  in  such  complete  harmony  with 
this  wonderful  Love  of  God,  diffused  through  all 
things." 

It  is  impossible  to  describe  the  shrinking  aversion 


UNDER-CURRENTS 347 

which  these  words  produced  upon  the  agitated  nerves 
of  Vennie.  Something  about  the  Christian  candi- 
date seemed  to  affect  her  with  an  actual  sense  of 
physical  nausea.  She  could  have  screamed,  to  feel 
the  man  so  near  her  —  the  dragging  sound  of  his  feet 
on  the  road,  the  way  he  breathed  and  cleared  his 
throat,  the  manner  in  which  his  hat  was  tilted,  all 
combined  to  irritate  her  unendurably.  She  found 
herself  fantastically  thinking  how  much  sooner  she 
would  have  married  even  the  egregious  John  Goring  — 
as  Lacrima  was  going  to  do  —  than  such  a  one  as  this. 
What  a  pass  Nevilton  had  brought  itself  to  —  when 
the  choice  lay  between  a  Mr.  Romer  and  a  Mr.  Wone! 

An  overpowering  wave  of  disgust  with  the  whole 
human  race  swept  over  her  —  what  wretched  creatures 
they  all  were  —  every  one  of  them!  She  mentally 
resolved  that  nothing  —  nothing  on  earth  —  should 
stop  her  entering  a  convent.  The  man  talked  of 
agreeable  odours  on  the  air.  The  air  was  poisoned, 
tainted,  infected!     It  choked  her  to  breathe  it. 

"I  am  so  glad  —  so  deeply  glad,  Mr.  Wone  con- 
tinued, "to  have  enjoyed  the  privilege  of  this  little 
quiet  conversation.  I  shall  never  forget  it.  I  feel  as 
though  it  had  brought  us  wonderfully,  beautifully, 
near  each  other.  It  is  on  such  occasions  as  this,  that 
one  feels  how  closely,  how  entirely,  in  harmony,  all 
earnest-minded  people  are!  Here  are  you,  my  dear 
young  lady,  the  descendant  of  such  a  noble  and 
ancient  house,  expressing  in  mute  and  tender  silence, 
your  sympathy  with  one  who  represents  the  aspira- 
tions of  the  poorest  of  the  people!  This  is  a  sym- 
bolic moment.  I  cannot  help  saying  so.  A  symbolic 
and  consecrated  moment!" 


348 WOOD  AND   STONE 

"We  had  better  walk  a  little  faster,"  remarked 
Miss  Seldom. 

"We  will.  We  will  walk  faster,"  agreed  Mr.  Wone. 
"But  you  must  let  me  put  on  record  what  this  con- 
versation has  meant  to  me!  It  has  made  me  more 
certain,  more  absolutely  certain  than  ever,  that  with- 
out a  deep  ethical  basis  our  great  movement  is  doomed 
to  hopeless  failure." 

The  tone  in  which  he  used  the  word  "ethical"  was 
so  irritating  to  Vennie,  that  she  felt  an  insane  long- 
ing to  utter  some  frightful  blasphemy,  or  even  in- 
decency, in  his  ears,  and  to  rush  away  with  a  peal 
of  hysterical  laughter. 

They  were  now  at  the  entrance  to  a  narrow  little 
alley  or  lane  which,  passing  a  solitary  cottage  and  an 
unfrequented  spring,  led  by  a  short  approach  directly 
into  the  village-square.  Half  way  down  this  lane  a 
curious  block  of  Leonian  stone  stood  in  the  middle  of 
the  path.  What  the  original  purpose  of  this  stone 
had  been  it  were  not  easy  to  tell.  The  upper  por- 
tion of  it  had  apparently  supported  a  chain,  but 
this  had  long  ago  disappeared.  At  the  moment  when 
Mr.  Wone  and  Miss  Seldom  reached  the  lane's  en- 
trance, a  soft  little  scream  came  from  the  spot  where 
the  stone  stood;  and  dimly,  in  the  shadowy  darkness, 
two  forms  became  visible,  engaged  in  some  osbcure 
struggle.  The  scream  was  repeated,  followed  by  a 
series  of  little  gasps  and  whisperings. 

Mr.  Wone  glanced  apprehensively  in  the  direction 
of  these  sounds  and  increased  his  pace.  He  was  con- 
founded with  amazement  when  he  found  that  Vennie 
had  stopped  as  if  to  investigate  further.  The  truth 
is,  he  had  reduced  the  girl  to  such  a  pitch  of  unnatu- 


UNDER-CURRENTS 349 

ral  revolt  that,  for  one  moment  in  her  life,  she  felt 
glad  that  there  were  flagrant  and  lawless  pleasures  in 
the  world. 

Led  by  an  unaccountable  impulse  she  made  several 
steps  up  the  lane.  The  figures  separated  as  she  ap- 
proached, one  of  them  boldly  advancing  to  meet  her, 
while  the  other  retreated  into  the  shadows.  The 
one  who  advanced,  finding  himself  alone,  turned  and 
called  to  his  companion,  "Annie!  Where  are  you.^* 
Come  on,  you  silly  girl!      It's  all  right." 

Vennie  recognized  the  voice  of  Luke  Andersen. 
She  greeted  him  with  hysterical  gratitude.  "I 
thought  it  was  you,  Mr.  Andersen;  but  you  did 
frighten  me!  I  took  you  for  a  ghost.  Who  is  that 
with  you.''" 

The  young  stone-carver  raised  his  hat  politely. 
"Only  our  little  friend  Annie,"  he  said.  "I  am  es- 
corting her  home  from  Yeoborough.  We  have  been 
on  an  errand  for  her  mother.  She's  such  a  baby, 
you  know,  Miss  Seldom,  our  little  Annie.  I  love 
teasing  her." 

"I  am  afraid  you  love  teasing  a  great  many  people, 
Mr.  Andersen,"  said  Vennie,  recovering  her  equanim- 
ity and  beginning  to  feel  ashamed.  "Here  is  Mr. 
Wone.  No  doubt,  he  will  be  anxious  to  talk  politics 
to  you.  Mr.  Wone!"  She  raised  her  voice  as  the 
astonished  Methodist  came  towards  them.  "It  is 
only  Mr.  Andersen.  You  had  better  talk  to  him  of 
your  plans.  I  am  afraid  I  shall  be  late  if  I  don't 
go  on."  She  slipped  aside  as  she  spoke,  leaving  the 
two  men  together,  and  hurried  off  towards  the 
church. 

Luke    Andersen    shook    hands    with    the    Christian 


350  WOOD  AND   STONE 

Candidate.  "How  goes  the  campaign,  the  great 
campaign?"  he  said.  "I  wonder  you  haven't  talked 
to  James  about  it.  James  is  a  hopeless  idealist. 
James  is  an  admirable  listener.  You  really  ought  to 
talk  to  James.  I  wish  you  would  talk  to  him;  and 
put  a  little  of  your  shrewd  common-sense  into  him! 
He  takes  the  populace  seriously  —  a  thing  you  and  I 
would  never  be  such  fools  as  to  do,  eh,  Mr.  Wone? 

"I  am  afraid  we  disturbed  you,"  remarked  the 
Nonconformist,  "Miss  Seldom  and  I  —  I  think  you 
had  someone  with  you.  Miss  Seldom  was  quite  in- 
terested.    We  heard  sounds,  and  she  stopped." 

"Oh,  only  Annie"  —  returned  the  young  man  lightly, 
"only  little  Annie.  We  are  old  friends  you,  know. 
Don't  worry  about  Annie!" 

"It  is  a  beautiful  night,  is  it  not?  remarked  the 
Methodist,  peering  down  the  lane.  Luke  Andersen 
laughed. 

"Are  you  by  any  chance,  Mr.  Wone,  interested  in 
astronomy?  If  so,  perhaps  you  can  tell  me  the  name 
of  that  star,  over  there,  between  Perseus  and  Androm- 
eda? No,  no;  that  one  —  that  greenish-coloured 
one!     Do  you  know  what  that  is?" 

"I  haven't  the  least  idea,"  confessed  the  represen- 
tative of  the  People  "But  I  am  a  great  admirer  of 
Nature.  My  admiration  for  Nature  is  one  of  the 
chief  motives  of  my  life." 

"I  believe  you,"  said  Luke.  "It  is  one  of  my 
own,  too.  I  admire  everything  in  it,  without  any 
exception." 

"I  hope,"  said  Mr.  Wone,  reverting  to  the  purpose 
that,  with  Nature,  shared  just  now  his  dominant 
interest,     "I  hope  you  are  also  with  us  in  our  struggle 


UNDER-CURRENTS  351 

against  oppression?  Mr.  Taxater  and  Miss  Seldom 
are  certainly  on  our  side.  I  sometimes  feel  as  though 
Nature  herself,  were  on  our  side,  especially  on  a 
lovely  night  like  this,  full  of   such  balmy  odours." 

"I  am  delighted  to  see  the  struggle  going  on,"  re- 
turned the  young  man,  emphatically.  "And  I  am 
thoroughly  glad  to  see  a  person  like  yourself  at  the 
head  of  it." 

"Then  you,  too,  will  take  a  part,"  cried  the  candi- 
date, joyfully.  "This,  indeed,  has  been  a  successful 
evening!  I  feel  sure  now  that  in  Nevilton,  at  any 
rate,  the  tide  will  flow  strongly  in  my  favour.  Next 
week,  I  have  to  begin  a  tour  of  the  whole  district. 
I  may  not  be  able  to  return  for  quite  a  long  time. 
How  happy  I  shall  be  to  know  that  I  leave  the  cause 
in  such  good  hands!  The  strike  is  the  important 
thing,  Andersen.  You  and  your  brother  must  work 
hard  to  bring  about  the  strike.  It  is  coming.  I 
know  it  is  coming.  But  I  want  it  soon.  I  want  it 
immediately." 

"The  stone-carver  nodded  and  hummed  a  tune. 
He  seemed  to  intimate  with  the  whole  air  of  his 
elegant  quiescence  that  the  moment  had  arrived  for 
Mr.  Wone's  departure. 

The  Nonconformist  felt  the  telepathic  pressure  of 
this  polite  dismissal.  He  waved  his  arm.  "Good 
night,  then;  good  night!  I  am  afraid  I  must  post- 
pone my  talk  with  Mr.  Clavering  till  another  occasion. 
Remember  the  strike,  Andersen!  That  is  what  I 
leave  in  your  hands.     Remember  the  strike!" 

The  noise  of  Mr.  Wone's  retreating  steps  was 
still  audible  when  Luke  returned  to  the  stone  in  the 
middle    of    Splash    Lane.      The    sky    was    clear    now 


352  WOOD   AND   STONE 

and  a  faint  whitish  gHmmer,  shining  on  the  worn 
surface  of  the  stone,  revealed  the  two  deep  holes  in 
it,  where  the  fastenings  of  the  chain  had  hung. 
The  young  man  tapped  the  stone  with  his  stick  and 
gave  a  low  whistle.  An  amorphous  heap  of  clothes, 
huddled  in  the  hedge,  stirred,  and  emitted  a  reproach- 
ful sound. 

"Oh,  you're  there,  are  you?  he  said.  "What  silly 
nonsense  is  this?  Get  up!  Let's  see  your  face!" 
He  stooped  and  pulled  at  the  object.  After  a  mo- 
ment's struggle  the  flexible  form  of  a  young  girl 
emerged  into  the  light.  She  held  down  her  head  and 
appeared  sulky  and  angry. 

"What's  the  matter,  Annie?"  whispered  the  youth 
encircling  her  with  his  arms. 

The  girl  shook  him  away.  "How  could  you  tell 
Miss  Seldom  who  I  was!"  she  murmured.  "How 
could  you  do  it,  Luke?  If  it  had  been  anybody 
else  —  but  for  her  to  know " 

The  stone-carver  laughed.  "Really,  child,  you  are 
too  ridiculous!  Why,  on  earth,  shouldn't  she  know, 
more  than  anyone  else?" 

The  girl  looked  fiercely  at  him.  "Because  she  is 
good,"  she  said.  "Because  she  is  the  only  good 
person  in  this  blasted  place!" 

The  young  man  showed  no  astonishment  at  this 
outburst.  "Come  on,  darling,"  he  rejoined.  "We 
must  be  getting  you  home.  I  daresay.  Miss  Seldom 
is  all  you  think.  It  seemed  to  me,  though,  that  she 
was  different  from  usual  tonight.  But  I  expect  that 
fool  had  upset  her." 

He  let  the  young  girl  lean  for  a  moment  against 
the  shadowy  stone  while  he  fumbled  for  his  cigarettes 


UNDER-CURRENTS 353 

and  matches.  He  observed  her  make  a  quick  move- 
ment with  her  hands. 

"What  are  you  up  to  now?"  he  asked. 

She  gave  a  fierce  little  laugh.  "There!"  she  cried. 
"I  have  done  it!" 

"What  have  you  done?"  he  enquired,  emitting  a 
puff  of  smoke,  and  throwing  the  lighted  match  into 
the  hedge. 

She  pressed  her  hands  against  the  stone  and  looked 
up  at  him  mischievously  and  triumphantly.  "Look!" 
she  said,  holding  out  her  fingers  in  the  darkness.  He 
surveyed  her  closely.  "What  is  it?  Have  you 
scratched  yourself?" 

"Light  a  match  and  see!"  she  cried.  He  lit  a 
match  and  examined  the  hand  she  held  towards  him. 

"You  have  thrown  away  that  ring!" 

"Not  thrown  it  away,  Luke;  not  thrown  it  away! 
I  have  pressed  it  down  into  this  hole.  You  can't 
get  it  out  now!     Nobody  never  can!" 

He  held  the  flickering  match  closely  against  the 
stone's  surface.  In  the  narrow  darkness  of  the 
aperture  she  indicated,  something  bright  glittered. 

"But  this  is  really  annoying  of  you,  Annie,"  said 
the  stone-carver.  "I  told  you  that  ring  was  only 
lent  to  me.     She'll  be  asking  for  it  back  tomorrow." 

"Well,  you  can  tell  her  to  come  here  and  get  it!" 

"But  this  is  really  serious,"  protested  Luke,  trying 
in  vain  to  reach  the  object  with  his  outstretched 
fingers. 

"And  I  have  twisted  my  hair  round  it!"  the  girl 
went  on,  in  exulting  excitement,  "I  have  twisted  it 
tight  around.     It  will  be  hard  to  get  it  off!" 

Luke  continued   making  ineffectual  dives  into  the 


354 WOOD  AND   STONE 

hole,  while  she  watched  him  gleefully.  He  went  to 
the  hedge  and  breaking  off  a  dusty  sprig  of  wound- 
wort prodded  the  ring  with  its  stalk, 

"You  can't  do  it"  she  cried,  "you  can't  do  it! 
You'll  only  push  it  further  in!" 

"Damn  you,  Annie!"  he  muttered.  "This  is  a 
horrible  kind  of  joke.  I  tell  you,  Gladys  will  want 
this  comfounded  thing  back  tomorrow.  She's  al- 
ready asked  me  twice  for  it.  She  only  gave  it  to 
me  for  fun." 

The  girl  leaned  across  the  stone  towards  him, 
propping  herself  on  the  palms  of  her  hands,  and 
laughing  mischievously.  "No  one  in  this  village 
can  get  that  ring  out  of  there!"  she  cried;  "no  one! 
And  when  they  does,  they'll  find  it  all  twisted  up 
with  my  hair!"  She  tossed  back  her  black  locks 
defiantly. 

Luke  Anderson's  thoughts  ran  upon  scissors,  pin- 
cers, willow-wands,  bramble-thorns,  and  children's 
arms. 

"Leave  it  then!"  he  said.  "After  all,  I  can  swear 
I  lost  it.     Come  on,  you  little  demon!" 

They  moved  away;  and  St.  Catharine's  church 
was  only  striking  the  hour  of  nine,  when  they  sepa- 
rated at  her  mother's  door. 


CHAPTER   XV 
MORTIMER  ROMER 

THE  incredibly  halcyon  June  which  had  filled 
the  lanes  and  meadows  of  Nevilton  that 
summer  with  such  golden  weather,  gave  place 
at  last  to  July;  and  with  July  came  tokens  of  a 
change. 

The  more  slow-growing  hay-fields  were  still  strewn 
with  their  little  lines  of  brown  mown  grass  waiting 
its  hour  of  "carrying,"  but  the  larger  number  of 
the  pastures  wore  now  that  freshly  verdant  and  yet 
curiously  sad  look,  which  fields  in  summer  wear  when 
they  have  been  shorn  of  their  first  harvest.  The 
corn  in  the  arable-lands  was  beginning  to  stand  high; 
wheat  and  barley  varying  their  alternate  ripening 
tints,  from  the  rich  gold  of  the  one,  to  the  dia- 
phanous glaucous  green,  so  tender  and  pallid,  of  the 
other.  In  the  hedges,  ragwort,  knapweed  and  scabious 
had  completely  replaced  wild-rose  and  elder-blossom; 
and  in  the  ditches  and  by  the  margins  of  ponds, 
loosestrife  and  willow-herb  were  beginning  to  bud. 
Even  the  latest-sprouting  among  the  trees  carried 
now  the  full  heavy  burden,  dark  and  monotonous,  of 
the  summer's  prime;  and  the  sharp,  dry  intermittent 
chirping  of  warblers,  finches  and  buntings,  had  long 
since  replaced,  in  the  garden-bushes,  the  more  flute- 
like cries  of  the  earlier-nesting  birds. 

The  shadowy  woods  of  the  Nevilton  valleys,  with 


356  WOOD  AND  STONE 

their  thick  entangled  undergrowth,  were  less  pleasant 
to  walk  in  than  they  had  been.  Tall  rank  growths 
choked  the  wan  remnants  of  the  season's  first  prime; 
and  beneath  sombre,  indistinguishable  foliage,  the 
dry,  hard-trodden  paths  lost  their  furtive  enchant- 
ment. Dog-mercury,  that  delicate  child  of  the  under- 
shadows,  was  no  more  now  than  a  gross  mass  of 
tarnished  leaves.  Enchanter's  nightshade  took  the 
place  of  pink-campion;  only  to  yield,  in  its  turn, 
to  viper's  bugloss  and  flea-bane. 

As  the  shy  gods  of  the  year's  tender  birth  receded 
before  these  ranker  maturings,  humanity  became 
more  prominent.  Print-frocked  maidens  assisted  the 
sheep  in  treading  the  slopes  of  Leo's  Hill  into  earthy 
grassless  patches.  Bits  of  dirty  paper  and  the  litter 
of  careless  picnickers  strewed  the  most  shadowy 
recesses.  Smart  youths  flicked  town-bought  canes  in 
places  where,  a  few  weeks  before,  the  squirrel  had 
gambolled  undisturbed,  and  the  wood-pecker  had 
deepened  the  magical  silence  by  his  patent  labour. 
Where  recently,  amid  shadowy  moss  "soft  as  sleep," 
the  delicate  petals  of  the  fragile  wood-sorrel  had 
breathed  untroubled  in  their  enchanted  aisles  of 
leafy  twilight,  one  found  oneself  reading,  upon 
torn  card-board  boxes,  highly-coloured  messages  to 
the  Human  Race  from  energetic  Tradesmen.  July 
had  replaced  June.  The  gods  of  Humanity  had  re- 
placed the  gods  of  Nature;  and  the  interlude  between 
hay-harvest  and  wheat-harvest  had  brought  the 
dog-star  Sirius  into  his  diurnal  ascendance. 

The  project  of  Lacrima's  union  with  Mr.  John 
Goring  remained,  so  to  speak,  "in  the  air."  The 
village  assumed  it  as  a  certainty;    Mr.  Quincunx  re- 


MORTIMER  ROMER  357 

garded  it  as  a  probability;  and  Mr.  Goring  himself, 
enjoying  his  yearly  session  of  agreeable  leisure, 
meditated  upon  it  day  and  night. 

Lacrima  had  fallen  into  a  curious  lassitude  with 
regard  to  the  whole  matter.  In  these  July  days, 
especially  now  that  the  sky  was  over-cast  by  clouds 
and  heavy  rains  seemed  imminent,  she  appeared  to 
lose  all  care  or  interest  in  her  own  life.  Her  mood 
followed  the  mood  of  the  weather.  If  some  desperate 
deluge  of  disaster  was  brooding  in  the  distance,  she 
felt  tempted  to  cry  out,  "Let  it  fall!" 

Mr.  Quincunx's  feelings  on  the  subject  remained  a 
mystery  to  her.  He  neither  seemed  definitely  to 
accept  her  sacrifice,  nor  to  reject  it.  He  did  not 
really  —  so  she  could  not  help  telling  herself  —  vis- 
ualize the  horror  of  the  thing,  as  it  affected  her,  in  any 
substantial  degree.  He  often  made  a  joke  of  it; 
and  kept  quoting  cynical  and  worldly  suggestions, 
from  the  lips  of  Luke  Andersen. 

On  the  other  hand,  both  from  Mr.  Romer  and 
the  farmer,  she  received  quiet,  persistent  and  inex- 
orable pressure;  though  to  do  the  latter  justice, 
he  made  no  further  attempts  to  treat  her  roughly  or 
familiarly. 

She  had  gone  so  far  once  —  in  a  mood  of  panic- 
stricken  aversion,  following  upon  a  conversation  with 
Gladys  —  as  actually  to  walk  to  the  vicarage  gate, 
with  the  definite  idea  of  appealing  to  Vennie;  but 
it  chanced  that  in  place  of  Vennie  she  had  observed 
Mrs.  Seldom  moving  among  her  flower-beds,  and  the 
grave  austerity  of  the  aristocratic  old  lady  had  taken 
all  resolution  from  her  and  made  her  retrace  her 
steps. 


358  WOOD  AND   STONE 

It  must  also  be  confessed  that  her  dislike  and  fear 
of  Gladys  had  grown  to  dimensions  bordering  upon 
monomania.  The  elder  girl  at  once  hypnotized  and 
paralyzed  her.  Her  sensuality,  her  feline  caprices, 
her  elaborately  cherished  hatred,  reduced  the  Italian 
to  such  helpless  misery,  that  any  change  —  even  the 
horror  of  this  marriage  —  assumed  the  likeness  of  a 
desirable  relief. 

It  is  also  true  that  by  gradual  degrees,  —  for  women, 
however  little  prone  to  abstract  thought,  are  quick 
to  turn  the  theories  of  those  they  love  into  living 
practice,  —  she  had  come  to  regard  the  mere  physical 
terror  of  this  momentous  plunge  as  a  less  insur- 
mountable barrier  than  she  had  felt  at  first.  With- 
out precisely  intending  it,  Mr.  Quincunx  had  really, 
in  a  measure  —  particularly  since  he  himself  had  come 
to  frequent  the  society  of  Luke  Andersen  —  achieved 
what  might  have  conventionally  been  called  the 
"corruption"  of  Lacrima's  mind.  She  found  herself 
on  several  occasions  imagining  what  she  would  really 
feel,  if,  escaped  for  an  afternoon  from  her  Priory 
duties,  she  were  slipping  off  to  meet  her  friend  in 
Camel's  Cover  or  Badger's  Bottom. 

When  the  suggestion  had  been  first  made  to  her 
of  this  monstrous  marriage,  it  had  seemed  nothing 
short  of  a  sentence  of  death,  and  beyond  the  actual 
consummation  of  it,  she  had  never  dreamed  of 
looking.  But  all  this  had  now  imperceptibly  changed. 
Many  an  evening  as  she  sat  with  her  work  by  Mrs. 
Romer's  side,  watching  Gladys  and  her  father  play 
cards,  the  thought  came  over  her  that  she  might 
just  as  well  enjoy  the  comparative  independence  of 
having  her  own   house   and   her   own   associations  — 


MORTIMER  ROMER  359 

even  though  the  price  of  them  were  the  society  of 
such  a  lump  of  clay  —  as  live  this  wretched  half-life 
without  hope  or  aim. 

Other  moods  arrived  when  the  thought  of  having 
children  of  her  own  came  to  her  with  something  more 
than  a  mere  sense  of  escape;  came  to  her  with  the 
enlargement  of  an  opening  horizon.  She  recalled  the 
many  meandering  discourses  which  Mr.  Quincunx 
had  addressed  to  her  upon  this  subject.  They  had 
not  affected  her  woman's  instincts;  but  they  had 
lodged  in  her  mind.  A  girl's  children,  so  her  friend 
had  often  maintained,  do  not  belong  to  the  father 
at  all.  The  father  is  nothing  —  a  mere  irrelevant 
incident,  a  mere  chance.  The  mother  alone  —  the 
mother  always  —  has  the  rights  and  pleasures,  as 
she  has  the  responsibilities  and  pains  of  the  parental 
relation.  She  even  recalled  one  occasion  of  twilight 
philosophizing  in  the  potato-bed,  when  Mr.  Quincunx 
had  gone  so  far  as  to  maintain  the  unscientific  thesis 
that  children,  born  where  there  is  no  love,  inherit 
character,  appearance,  tastes,  everything  —  from  the 
mother. 

Lacrima  had  a  dim  suspicion  that  some  of  these 
less  pious  theories  were  due  to  the  perverse  Luke, 
who,  as  the  cloudier  July  days  overcast  his  evening 
rambles,  had  acquired  the  habit  of  strolling  at  night- 
fall into  Mr.  Quincunx's  kitchen.  Once  indeed  she 
was  certain  she  discerned  the  trail  of  this  plausible 
heathen  in  her  friend's  words.  Mr.  Quincunx,  with 
one  of  his  peculiarly  goblin-like  leers,  had  intimated  — 
in  jest  indeed,  but  with  a  searching  look  into  her  face 
that  it  would  be  no  very  difficult  task  to  deceive,  — 
in    shrewd    Panurgian    roguery,    this    clumsy    clown. 


360  WOOD  AND   STONE 

His  words  at  the  time  had  hurt  and  shocked  her; 
and  her  reaction  from  them  had  led  to  the  spoiHng 
of  a  pleasant  conversation;  but  they  invaded  after- 
wards, more  deeply  than  she  would  have  cared  to 
confess,  her  hours  of  dreamy  solitude. 

Her  southern  imagination,  free  from  both  the 
grossness  and  the  hypocrisy  of  the  Nevilton  mind, 
was  much  readier  to  wander  upon  an  antinomian 
path  —  at  least  in  its  wayward  fancies  —  than  it 
would  have  been,  had  circumstances  not  led  her 
away  from  her  inherited  faith. 

While  the  sensuality  of  Gladys  left  her  absolutely 
untouched,  the  anarchistic  theories  of  her  friend  — 
especially  now  they  had  been  fortified  and  directed 
by  the  insidious  Luke  —  gave  her  intelligence  many 
queer  and  lawless  topics  of  solitary  brooding.  Her 
senses,  her  instincts,  were  as  pure  and  unsophisticated 
as  ever;  but  her  conscience  was  besieged  and  threat- 
ened. It  was  indeed  a  queer  role  —  this,  which  fate 
laid  upon  Mr.  Quincunx  —  the  role  of  undermining 
the  reluctance  of  his  own  sweetheart  to  make  a 
loveless  marriage  —  but  it  was  one  for  which  his 
curious  lack  of  physical  passion  singularly  fitted 
him. 

Had  Vennie  Seldom  or  Hugh  Clavering  been  aware 
of  the  condition  of  affairs  they  would  have  con- 
demned Mr.  Quincunx  in  the  most  wholesale  man- 
ner. Clavering  would  probably  have  been  tempted 
to  apply  to  him  some  of  the  most  abusive  language 
in  the  dictionary.  But  it  is  extremely  question- 
able whether  this  judgment  of  theirs  would  have  been 
justified. 

A    more    enlightened    planetary   observer,    initiated 


MORTIMER  ROMER  361 

into  the  labyrinthine  hearts  of  men,  might  well  have 
pointed  out  that  Mr.  Quincunx's  theories  were  largely 
a  matter  of  pure  speculation,  humorously  remote 
from  any  contact  with  reality.  He  might  also  have 
reminded  these  indignant  ones  that  Mr.  Quincunx 
quite  genuinely  laboured  under  the  illusion  —  if 
it  were  an  illusion  —  that  for  his  friend  to  be  mistress 
of  the  Priory  and  free  of  her  dependence  on  the 
Romers  was  a  thing  eminently  desirable,  and  worth 
the  price  she  paid  for  it.  Such  an  invisible  clair- 
voyant might  even  have  surmised,  what  no  one  in 
Nevilton  who  knew  of  Mr.  Romer's  offer  would  for 
one  second  have  believed;  namely,  that  he  would 
have  given  her  the  same  advice  had  there  been  no 
such  offer,  simply  on  the  general  ground  of  binding 
her  permanently  to  the  place. 

The  fact,  however,  remained,  that  by  adopting  this 
ambiguous  and  evasive  attitude  Mr.  Quincunx  re- 
duced the  more  heroic  and  romantic  aspect  of  the 
girl's  sacrifice  to  the  lowest  possible  level,  and  flung 
her  into  a  mood  of  reckless  and  spiritless  indifference. 
She  was  brought  to  the  point  of  losing  all  interest 
in  her  own  fate  and  of  simply  relapsing  upon  the 
tide  of  events. 

It  was  precisely  to  this  condition  that  Mr.  Romer 
had  desired  to  bring  her.  When  she  had  first  at- 
tracted him,  and  had  fallen  into  his  hands,  there  had 
been  certain  psychological  contests  between  them,  in 
which  the  quarry-owner  had  by  no  means  emerged 
victorious.  It  was  the  rankling  memory  of  these 
contests  —  contests  spiritual  rather  than  material  — 
which  had  issued  in  his  gloomy  hatred  of  her  and  his 
longing  to  corrupt  her  mind  and  humiliate  her  soul. 


362  WOOD   AND   STONE 

This  corruption,  this  humiliation  had  been  long  in 
coming.  It  had  seemed  out  of  his  own  power  and 
out  of  the  power  of  his  feline  daughter  to  bring 
it  about;  but  this  felicitous  plan  of  using  the 
girl's  own  friend  to  assist  her  moral  disentegra- 
tion  appeared  to  have  changed  the  issue  very  com- 
pletely. 

Mr.  Romer,  watching  her  from  day  to  day,  became 
more  and  more  certain  that  her  integral  soul,  the  in- 
most fortress  of  her  self-respect,  was  yielding  inch 
by  inch.  She  had  flung  the  rudder  down;  and  was 
drifting  upon  the  tide. 

It  might  have  been  a  matter  of  surprise  to  some 
ill-judging  psychologists  that  a  Napoleonic  intriguer, 
of  the  quarry-owner's  type,  should  ever  have  entered 
upon  a  struggle  apparently  so  unequal  and  unim- 
portant as  that  for  the  mere  integrity  of  a  solitary 
girl's  spirit.  Such  a  judgment  would  display  little 
knowledge  of  the  darker  possibilities  of  human  char- 
acter. Resistance  is  resistance,  from  whatever  quar- 
ter it  comes;  and  the  fragile  soul  of  a  helpless  Pariah 
may  be  just  as  capable  of  provoking  the  aggressive 
instincts  of  a  born  master  of  men  as  the  most  obdurate 
of  commercial  rivals. 

There  are  certain  psychic  oppositions  to  our  will, 
which,  when  once  they  have  been  encountered,  re- 
main indelibly  in  the  memory  as  a  challenge  and  a 
defiance,  until  their  provocation  has  been  wiped  out 
in  their  defeat.  It  matters  nothing  that  such  opposi- 
tions should  spring  from  weak  or  trifling  quarters. 
We  have  been  baffled,  thwarted,  fooled;  and  we  can- 
not recover  the  feeling  of  identity  with  ourselves, 
until,  like  a  satisfied  tidal  wave,  our  will  has  drowned 


MORTIMER  ROMER  363 

completely  the  barricades  that  defied  it.  It  matters 
nothing  if  at  the  beginning,  what  we  were  thwarted 
by  was  a  mere  trifle,  a  straw  upon  the  wind,  a 
feather  in  the  breeze.  The  point  is  that  our  will,  in 
flowing  outwards,  at  its  capricious  pleasure,  met 
with  opposition  —  met  with  resistance.  We  do  not 
really  recover  our  self-esteem  until  every  memory  of 
such  an  event  has  been  obliterated  by  a  complete 
revenge. 

It  is  useless  to  object  that  a  powerful  ambitious 
man  of  the  Romer  mould,  contending  Atlas-like  under 
a  weight  of  enormous  schemes,  was  not  one  to  harbour 
such  long-lingering  rancour  against  a  mere  Pariah. 
There  was  more  in  the  thing  than  appears  on  the 
surface.  The  brains  of  mortal  men  are  queer  cru- 
cibles, and  the  smouldering  fires  that  heat  them 
are  driven  by  capricious  and  wanton  guests.  La- 
crima's  old  defeat  of  the  owner  of  Leo's  Hill  —  a  de- 
feat into  which  there  is  no  need  to  descend  now,  for 
its  "terrain"  was  remote  from  our  present  stage  — 
had  been  a  defeat  upon  what  might  be  called  a  sub- 
liminal or  interior  plane. 

It  was  almost  as  if  he  had  encountered  her  and  she 
had  encountered  him,  not  only  in  the  past  of  this 
particular  life,  but  a  remoter  past  —  in  a  past  of 
some  pre-natal  incarnation.  There  are  —  as  is  well- 
known,  many  instances  of  this  unfathomable  con- 
flict between  certain  human  types  —  types  that  seem 
to  find  one  another,  that  seem  to  be  drawn  to  one 
another,  by  some  pre-ordained  necessity  in  the  occult 
influences  of  mortal  fate.  It  matters  nothing  in  re- 
gard to  such  a  conflict,  that  on  one  side  should  be 
strength,  power  and  position,  and  on  the  other  weak- 


364  WOOD   AND   STONE 

ness  and  helplessness.  The  soul  is  the  soul,  and  has 
its  own  laws. 

It  is  a  case  of  what  a  true  initiate  into  the  secrets 
of  our  terrestrial  drama  might  entitle  Planetary 
Opposition.  By  some  hidden  law  of  planetary  op- 
position, this  frail  child  of  the  Apennine  ridges  was 
destined  to  provoke,  to  an  apparently  quite  unequal 
struggle,  this  formidable  schemer  from  the  money- 
markets  of  London, 

In  these  strange  pre-natal  attractions  and  re- 
pulsions between  men  and  women,  the  mere  con- 
ventional differences  of  rank  and  social  importance 
are  as  nothing  and  less  than  nothing. 

Vast  unfathomable  tides  of  cosmic  conflict  drive  us 
all  backwards  and  forwards;  and  if  under  the  as- 
cendance of  Sirius  in  the  track  of  the  Sun,  the  master 
of  Nevilton  found  himself  devoting  more  energy  to 
the  humiliation  of  his  daughter's  companion  than  to 
his  election  to  the  British  Parliament,  one  can  only 
remember  that  both  of  them  —  the  strong  and  the 
weak  —  were  merely  puppets  and  pawns  of  elemental 
forces,  compared  with  which  he,  as  well  as  she,  was 
as  the  chaff  before  the  wind. 

It  was  one  of  the  peculiarities  of  this  Nevil- 
ton valley  to  draw  to  itself,  as  we  have  already 
hinted,  and  focus  strangely  in  itself,  these  airy  and 
elemental  oppositions.  To  rise  above  the  clash  of 
the  Two  Mythologies  on  this  spot,  with  all  their 
planetary  "auxiliar  gods,"  one  would  have  had 
to  ascend  incredibly  high  into  that  star-sown 
space  above  —  perhaps  so  high,  that  the  whole 
solar  system,  rushing  madly  through  the  ether 
towards   the    constellation   of    Hercules,    would   have 


MORTIMER  ROMER  365 

shown  itself  as  less  than  a  cluster  of  wayward  fire- 
flies. From  a  height  as  supreme  as  this,  the  difference 
between  Mortimer  Romer  and  Lacrima  Traffic  would 
have  been  less  than  the  difference  between  two 
summer-midges  transacting  their  affairs  on  the  edge 
of  a  reed  in  Auber  Lake. 

Important  or  unimportant,  however,  the  struggle 
went  on;  and,  as  July  advanced,  seemed  to  tend 
more  and  more  to  Mr.  Romer's  advantage.  Pre- 
cisely what  he  desired  to  happen  was  indeed  happen- 
ing —  Lacrima's  soul  was  disintegrating;  her  powers 
of  resistance  were  diminishing;  and  a  reckless  care- 
lessness about  her  personal  fate  was  taking  the  place 
of  her  old  sensitive  apprehensions. 

Another  important  matter  went  well  at  this  time 
for  Mr.  Romer.  His  daughter  became  formally  en- 
gaged to  the  wealthy  American.  Dangelis  had  been 
pressing  her,  for  many  weeks,  to  come  to  some 
definite  decision,  between  himself  and  Lord  Tintin- 
hull's  heir,  and  she  had  at  last  made  up  her  mind  and 
given  him  her  promise. 

The  Romers  were  enchanted  at  this  new  develop- 
ment. Mrs.  Romer  had  always  disliked  the  thought 
of  having  to  enter  into  closer  relations  with  the 
aristocracy  —  relations  for  which  she  was  so  obviously 
unsuited;  and  Ralph  Dangelis  fitted  in  exactly  with 
her  idea  of  what  her  son-in-law  should  be. 

Mr.  Romer,  too,  found  in  Dangelis  just  the  sort  of 
son  he  had  always  longed  for.  He  had  quite  recog- 
nized, by  this  time,  that  the  "artistic"  tastes  of  the 
American  and  his  unusual  talent  interfered  in  no 
way  with  the  possession  of  a  very  shrewd  intellectual 
capacity.     Dangelis  had  indeed  all  the  qualities  that 


366  WOOD  AND   STONE 

Mr.  Romer  most  admired.  He  was  strong.  He  was 
clever.  He  was  an  entertaining  companion.  He  was 
at  once  very  formidable  and  very  good-tempered. 
And  he  was  immensely  rich. 

It  would  have  annoyed  him  to  see  Gladys  domi- 
nate a  man  of  this  sort  with  her  capricious  ways. 
But  he  had  not  the  remotest  fear  that  she  would 
dominate  this  citizen  of  Ohio.  Dangelis  would  pet  her 
and  spoil  her  and  deluge  her  with  money,  but  keep 
a  firm  and  untroubled  hand  over  her;  and  that 
exactly  suited  Mr.  Romer's  wishes.  The  man's 
wealth  would  also  be  an  immense  help  to  himself  in 
his  financial  undertakings.  Together  they  would  be 
able  to  engineer  colossal  and  world-shaking  schemes. 

It  was  a  satisfaction,  too,  to  think  that,  when  he 
died,  his  loved  quarries  on  Leo's  Hill  and  his  historic 
Leonian  House  should  fall  into  the  hands,  not  of  these 
Ilchesters  and  Ilminsters  and  Evershots  —  families 
whose  pretensions  he  hated  and  derided  —  but  of  an 
honest  descendant  of  plain  business  men  of  his  own 
class. 

It  was  Mrs.  Romer,  and  not  her  husband,  who 
uttered  a  lament  that  the  House  after  their  death 
should  no  longer  be  the  property  of  one  of  their  own 
name.  She  proposed  that  Gladys'  American  should  be 
induced  to  change  his  name.  But  Mr.  Romer  would 
hear  nothing  of  this.  His  system  was  the  old  im- 
perial Roman  system,  of  succession  by  adoption. 
The  man  who  could  deal  with  the  Legions,  the  man 
who  was  strong  enough  to  suppress  strikes  on  Leo's 
Hill,  and  cope  successfully  with  such  rascals  as  this 
voluble  Wone,  was  the  man  to  inherit  Nevilton! 
Be  his  patronymic  what  you  please,  such  a  man  was 


MORTIMER   ROMER  367 

Caesar.  Himself,  a  new-comer,  risen  from  nothing, 
and  contemptuous  of  all  tradition,  it  had  constantly 
been  a  matter  of  serious  annoyance  to  him  that  the 
wealth  he  had  amassed  should  only  go  to  swell  the 
pride  of  these  fatuous  landed  gentry.  It  delighted 
him  to  think  that  Gladys'  children  —  the  future  in- 
heritors of  his  labour  —  should  be,  on  their  father's 
side  also,  from  new  and  untraditional  stock.  It 
gave  him  immense  satisfaction  to  think  of  disappoint- 
ing Lord  Tintinhull,  who  no  doubt  had  long  ago 
told  his  friends  how  sad  it  was  that  his  son  had  got 
entangled  with  that  girl  at  Nevilton;  but  how  nice 
it  was  that  Nevilton  House  should  in  the  future 
take  its  proper  place  in  the  county. 

There  was  one  cloud  on  Mr.  Romer's  horizon  at 
this  moment,  and  that  cloud  was  composed  of  vapours 
spun  from  the  brain  of  his  parliamentary  rival,  the 
eloquent  Methodist. 

Mr.  Wone  had  long  been  at  work  among  the  Leo's 
Hill  quarry-men,  encouraging  them  to  strike.  Until 
the  second  week  in  July  his  efforts  had  been  fruitless; 
but  with  the  change  in  the  weather  to  which  we  have 
referred,  the  strike  came.  It  had  already  lasted 
some  seven  or  eight  days,  when  a  Saturday  arrived 
which  had  been  selected,  several  months  before,  for 
a  great  political  gathering  on  the  summit  of  Leo's 
Hill.  This  was  a  meeting  of  radicals  and  socialists 
to  further  the  cause  of  Mr.  Wone's  campaign. 

Leo's  Hill  had  been,  for  many  generations,  the  site 
of  such  local  gatherings.  These  gatherings  were  not 
confined  to  political  demonstrators.  They  were  usu- 
ally attended  by  circus-men  and  other  caterers  to 
proletarian    amusement;     and    were    often    quite    as 


368  WOOD   AND   STONE 

lively,   in  their  accompaniments  of  feasting  and  fes- 
tivity, as  any  country  fair. 

The  actual  speaking  took  place  at  the  extreme 
northern  end  of  the  hill,  where  there  was  a  singular 
and  convenient  feature,  lending  itself  to  such  assem- 
blies, in  the  formation  of  the  ground.  This  was  the 
grassy  outline,  still  emphasizing  quite  distinctly  its 
ancient  form,  of  the  military  Roman  amphitheatre 
attached  to  the  camp.  Locally  the  place  was  known 
as  "the  Frying-pan",  from  its  marked  and  grotesque 
resemblance  to  that  utensil;  but  no  base  culinary 
appellation,  issue  of  Anglo-Saxon  unimaginativeness, 
could  conceal  the  formidable  classic  moulding  of 
its  well-known  shape  —  the  shape  of  the  imperial 
colisseum. 

Between  the  Frying-pan  and  the  southern  side 
of  the  liill,  where  the  bulk  of  the  quarries  were,  rose 
a  solitary  stone  building.  One  hardly  expected  the 
presence  of  such  a  building  in  such  a  place,  for  it 
was  a  considerable-sized  inn;  but  the  suitableness  of 
the  grassy  expanses  of  the  ancient  camp  for  all 
manner  of  tourist- jaunts  accounted  for  its  erection; 
and  doubtless  it  served  a  good  purpose  in  softening 
with  interludes  of  refreshment  the  labours  of  the 
quarry-men. 

It  was  the  presence  of  this  admirable  tavern  so 
near  the  voice  of  the  orator,  that  led  Mr.  Romer, 
himself,  to  stroll,  on  that  Saturday,  in  the  direction 
of  his  rival's  demonstration.  Though  the  more  con- 
siderable of  his  quarries  were  at  the  southern  end  of 
the  hill,  certain  new  excavations,  in  the  success  of 
which  he  took  exceptional  interest,  had  been  latterly 
made  in  its  very  centre,  and  within  a  stone's  throw 


MORTIMER   ROMER  3()9 

of  the  tavern-door.  The  great  cranes,  used  in  this 
new  invasion,  stood  out  against  the  sky  from  the 
highest  part  of  the  hill,  and  assumed,  especially  at 
sunset,  when  their  shape  was  rendered  most  em- 
phatic, the  form  of  enormous  compasses,  planted 
there  by  some  gigantic  architectural  hand. 

It  was  in  relation  to  these  new  works  that  Mr. 
Romer,  towards  the  close  of  the  afternoon,  found  him- 
self advancing  along  the  narrow  path  that  led,  be- 
tween clumps  of  bracken  and  furze-bushes,  from  the 
most  westward  of  his  woods  to  the  hill's  base.  Mr. 
Lickwit  had  informed  him  that  there  was  talk, 
among  some  of  the  more  intransigeant  of  the  Yeo- 
borough  socialists,  about  destroying  these  cranes. 
Objections  had  been  brought  against  them,  in  recent 
newspaper  articles,  on  purely  aesthetic  grounds.  It 
was  said  they  disfigured  the  classic  outline  of  the 
bill,  and  interfered  with  a  land-mark  which  had  been 
a  delight  to  every  eye  for  unnumbered  ages. 

It  was  hardly  to  be  supposed  that  the  more  official 
sf  the  supporters  of  Mr.  Wone  would  condone  any 
such  outbreak.  It  was  unlikely  that  Wone  himself 
would  do  so.  The  "Christian  Candidate,"  as  his 
Methodist  friends  called  him,  was  in  no  way  a  man 
af  violence.  But  the  fact  that  there  had  been  this 
pseudo-public  criticism  of  the  works  from  an  un- 
political point  of  view  might  lend  colour  to  any  sort 
af  scandal.  There  were  plenty  of  bold  spirits  among 
the  by-streets  of  Yeoborough  who  would  have  loved 
nothing  better  than  to  send  Mr.  Romer's  cranes 
toppling  over  into  a  pit,  and  indeed  it  was  the  sort 
af  adventure  which  would  draw  all  the  more  restless 
portion   of   the    meeting's   audience.     The   possibility 


370  WOOD  AND   STONE 

was  the  more  threatening  because  the  presence  of 
this  kind  of  general  fair  attracted  to  the  hill  all 
manner  of  heterogeneous  persons  quite  unconnected 
with  the  locality. 

But  what  really  influenced  Mr.  Romer  in  making 
his  own  approach  to  the  spot,  was  the  neighbourhood 
of  the  Half  Moon.  Where  there  was  drink,  he  argued, 
people  would  get  drunk;  and  where  people  got  drunk, 
anything  might  happen.  He  had  instituted  Mr. 
Lick  wit  to  remain  on  guard  at  the  eastern  works; 
and  he  had  written  to  the  superintendent  of  police 
suggesting  the  advisability  of  special  precautions. 
But  he  felt  nervous  and  ill  at  ease  as  he  listened, 
from  his  Nevilton  terrace,  to  the  distant  shouts  and 
clamour  carried  to  him  on  the  west  wind;  and  true 
to  his  Napoleonic  instincts,  he  proceeded,  without 
informing  anyone  of  his  intention,  straight  to  the 
zone  of  danger. 

The  afternoon  was  very  hot,  though  there  was  no 
sun.  The  wind  blew  in  threatening  gusts,  and  the 
quarry-owner  noticed  that  the  distant  Quantock 
Moors  were  overhung  with  a  dark  bank  of  lowering 
clouds.  It  was  one  of  those  sinister  days  that  have 
the  power  of  taking  all  colour  and  all  interest  out  of 
the  earth's  surface.  The  time  of  the  year  lent  itself 
gloomily  to  this  sombre  unmasking.  The  furze- 
bushes  looked  like  dead  things.  Many  of  them  had 
actually  been  burnt  in  some  wanton  conflagration; 
and  their  prickly  branches  carried  warped  and 
blighted  seeds.  The  bracken,  near  the  path,  had  been 
dragged  and  trodden.  Here  and  there  its  stalks  pro- 
truded like  thin  amputated  arms.  The  elder-bushes, 
caught  in  the  wind,  showed    white    and  metallic,  as 


MORTIMER  ROMER  371 

if  all  their  leaves  had  been  dipped  in  some  brackish 
water.  All  the  trees  seemed  to  have  something  of 
this  dull,  whitish  glare,  which  did  not  prevent  them 
from  remaining,  in  the  recesses  of  their  foliage,  as 
drearily  dark  as  the  dark  dull  soil  beneath  them. 
The  grass  of  the  fields  had  a  look  congruous  with  the 
rest  of  the  scene;  a  look  as  if  it  had  been  one  large 
velvety  pall,  drawn  over  the  whole  valley. 

In  the  valley  itself,  along  the  edges  of  this  grassy 
hall,  the  tall  clipped  elm-trees  stood  like  mourning 
sentinels  bowing  towards  their  dead.  Drifting  but- 
terflies, principally  of  the  species  known  as  the 
"Lesser  Heath"  and  the  "Meadow-Brown,"  whirled 
past  his  feet  as  he  walked,  in  troubled  and  tarnished 
helplessness.  Here  and  there  a  weak  dilapidated 
currant-moth,  the  very  epitome  of  surrender  to  cir- 
cumstance, tried  in  vain  to  arrest  its  enforced  flight 
among  the  swaying  stalks  of  grey  melancholy  thistles, 
the  only  living  things  who  seemed  to  find  the  temper 
of  the  day  congenial  with  their  own. 

When  he  reached  the  base  of  the  hill,  Mr.  Romer 
was  amazed  at  the  crowd  of  people  which  the  fes- 
tivity had  attracted  to  the  place.  He  had  heard 
them  passing  down  the  roads  all  day  from  the  seclu- 
sion of  his  garden,  and  to  judge  by  such  vehicles 
as  he  had  secured  a  glimpse  of  from  the  entrance  to 
his  drive,  many  of  them  must  have  come  from  miles 
away.  But  he  had  never  expected  a  crowd  like  this. 
It  seemed  to  cover  the  whole  northern  side  of  the 
hill,  swaying  to  and  fro,  like  some  great  stream  of 
voracious  maggots,  in  the  body  of  a  dead  animal. 

Round  the  cranes,  in  the  centre  of  the  hill,  the 
crowd   seemed   especially    thick.      He    made    out   the 


372  WOOD  AND   STONE 

presence  there  of  several  large  caravans,  and  he  heard 
the  music  of  a  merry-go-round  from  that  direction. 
This  latter  sound,  in  its  metallic  and  ferocious  gaiety, 
seemed  especially  adapted  to  the  character  of  the 
scene.  It  seemed  like  the  very  voice  of  some  savage 
Dionysian  helot-feast,  celebrated  in  defiance  of  all 
constituted  authority.  It  was  such  music  as  Caliban 
would  have  loved. 

Unwilling  to  arouse  unnecessary  anger  by  making 
his  presence  known,  while  there  was  no  cause,  Mr. 
Romer  left  the  Half  Moon  on  his  right,  and  crossing 
the  brow  of  the  hill  diagonally,  by  a  winding  path 
that  encircled  the  grassy  hollows  of  innumerable 
ancient  quarries,  arrived  at  the  foot  of  an  immense 
circular  tumulus  which  dominated  the  whole  scene. 
This  indeed  was  the  highest  point  of  Leo's  Hill,  and 
from  its  summit  one  looked  far  away  towards  the 
Bristol  Channel  in  one  direction,  and  far  away 
towards  the  English  Channel  in  another.  It  was,  as 
it  were,  the  very  navel  and  pivot  of  that  historic 
region.  From  this  spot  one  obtained  a  sort  of  birds- 
eye  view  of  the  whole  surface  of  Leo's  Hill. 

Here  Mr.  Romer  found  himself  quite  alone,  and 
from  here,  with  hands  clasped  behind  him,  he  sur- 
veyed the  scene  with  a  grave  satiric  smile.  He  could 
see  his  new  works  with  the  immense  cranes  reaching 
into  the  sky  above  them.  He  could  see  the  swaying 
crowd  round  the  amphitheatre  at  the  extreme  corner 
of  the  promontory;  and  he  could  see,  embosomed  in 
trees  to  the  left  of  Nevilton's  Mount,  a  portion  of 
his  own  Elizabethan  dwelling. 

Mr.  Romer  felt  strong  and  confident  as  he  looked 
down  on  all  these  things.     He  always  seemed  to  renew 


MORTIMER   ROMER  373 

the  forces  of  his  being  when  he  visited  this  grass- 
covered  repository  of  his  wealth  and  influence.  Leo's 
Hill  suited  his  temper,  and  he  felt  as  though  he  suited 
the  temper  of  Leo's  Hill.  Between  the  man  who 
exploited  the  stone,  and  the  great  reservoir  of  the 
stone  he  exploited,  there  seemed  an  illimitable  affinity. 

He  looked  down  with  grim  and  humorous  contempt 
at  the  noisy  crowd  thus  invading  his  sacred  domain. 
They  might  harangue  their  hearts  out,  —  those  be- 
sotted sentimentalists,  —  he  could  well  afford  to  let 
them  talk!  They  might  howl  and  dance  and  feast 
and  drink,  till  they  were  as  dazed  as  Comus'  rabble, 
—  he  could  afford  to  let  them  shout!  Probably  Mr. 
Wone,  the  "Christian  Candidate,"  was  even  at  that 
moment,  making  his  great  final  appeal  for  election 
at  the  hands  of  the  noble,  the  free,  the  enlightened 
constituency  of  Mid-Wessex. 

Romer  felt  an  immense  wave  of  contempt  surge 
through  his  veins  for  this  stream  of  fatuous  humanity 
as  it  swarmed  before  his  eyes  like  an  army  of  dis- 
turbed ants.  How  little  their  anger  or  their  affection 
mattered  to  him  —  or  mattered  to  the  world  at  large ! 
He  would  have  liked  to  have  seized  in  his  hands 
some  vast  celestial  torch  and  suffocated  them  all 
in  its  smoke,  as  one  would  choke  out  a  wasp's  nest. 
Their  miserable  little  pains  and  pleasures  were  not 
worth  the  trouble  Nature  had  taken  in  giving  them 
the  gift  of  life.  Dead  or  alive  —  happy  or  unhappy  — 
they  were  not  deserving  of  any  more  consideration 
than  a  cloud  of  gnats  that  one  brushed  away  from 
one's  face. 

The  master  of  Leo's  Hill  drew  a  deep  breath  and 
lietened     to     the     screams     of    the     merry-go-round. 


374  WOOD  AND   STONE 

Something  in  the  strident  machine  made  him  think 
of  hymn-singing  and  mob-religion.  This  Religion  of 
Sentiment  and  Self-Pity  with  which  they  cloak  their 
weakness  and  their  petty  rancour  —  what  is  it,  he 
thought,  but  an  excuse  of  escaping  from  the  necessity 
of  being  strong  and  fearless  and  hard  and  formidable? 
It  is  easier  —  so  much  easier  —  to  draw  back,  and 
go  aside,  and  deal  in  paltry  subterfuges  and  sneaking 
jealousies,  veneered  over  with  hypocritical  unction, 
than  to  strike  out  and  pursue  one's  own  way  drastic- 
ally and  boldly. 

He  folded  his  arms  and  frowned.  What  is  it,  he 
muttered  to  himself,  this  hidden  Force,  this  Power, 
this  God,  to  which  they  raise  their  vague  appeals 
against  the  proud,  clear,  actual  domination  of  natural 
law  and  unscrupulous  strength?  Is  there  really  some 
other  element  in  the  world,  some  other  fact,  from 
which  they  can  draw  support  and  encouragement? 
There  cannot  be!  He  looked  at  the  lowering  sky 
above  him,  and  at  the  grey  thistles  and  little  patches 
of  thyme  under  his  feet.  All  was  solid,  real,  unyield- 
ing. There  was  no  gap,  no  open  door,  in  the  stark 
surface  of  things,  through  which  such  a  mystery  might 
enter. 

He  found  himself  vaguely  wondering  whose  grave 
this  had  originally  been,  this  great  flat  tumulus,  upon 
which  he  stood  and  hated  the  mob  of  men.  There 
was  a  burnt  circle  in  the  centre  of  it,  with  blackened 
cinders.  The  place  had  been  used  for  some  recent 
national  rejoicing,  and  they  had  raised  a  bonfire 
here.  He  supposed  that  there  must  have  been  a 
much  more  tremendous  bonfire  in  the  days  when  — 
perhaps  before  the  Romans  —  this  mound  was  raised 


MORTIMER  ROMER  375 

to  celebrate  some  savage  chieftain.  He  wondered 
whether,  in  his  life-time,  this  long-buried,  long-for- 
gotten one  had  stood,  even  as  he  stood  now,  and 
cried  aloud  to  the  Earth  and  the  Sky  in  sick  loathing 
of  his  wretched  fellow-animals. 

He  humorously  speculated  whether  this  man  also, 
this  ancient  challenger  of  popular  futility,  had  been 
driven  to  strange  excesses  by  the  provocative  resist- 
ance of  some  feeble  girl,  making  her  mute  appeals  to 
the  suppressed  conscience  in  him,  and  calling  in  the 
help  of  tender  compassionate  gods?  Had  they  sof- 
tened this  buried  chieftain's  heart,  these  gods  of 
slavish  souls  and  weak  wills,  before  he  went  down 
into  darkness?  Or  had  he  defied  them  to  the  last 
and  died  lonely,  implacable,  contemptuous? 

The  quarry-owner's  ears  began  to  grow  irritated 
at  last  by  these  raucous  metallic  sounds  and  by  the 
laughter  and  the  shouting.  It  was  so  precisely  as  if 
this  foolish  crowd  were  celebrating,  in  drunken  ecstasy, 
a  victory  won  over  him,  and  over  all  that  was  clear- 
edged,  self-possessed,  and  effectual,  in  this  confused 
world.  He  struck  off  the  heads  of  some  of  the  grey 
thistles  with  his  cane,  and  wished  they  had  been  the 
heads  of  the  Christian  Candidate  and  his  oratorical 
associates. 

Presently  his  attention  was  excited  by  a  tremendous 
hubbub  at  the  northern  extremity  of  the  hill.  The 
crowd  seemed  to  have  gone  mad.  They  cheered 
again  and  again,  and  seemed  vociferating  some  popu- 
lar air  or  some  marching-song.  He  could  almost 
catch  the  words  of  this.  The  curious  thing  was  that 
he  could  not  help  in  his  heart  dallying  with  the  strange 
wish  that  in  place  of  being  the  man  at  the  top,  he 


376  WOOD  AND   STONE 

had  been  one  of  these  men  at  the  bottom.  How  dif- 
ferently he  would  have  conducted  the  affair.  He  knew, 
from  his  dealings  with  the  country  families,  how 
deep  this  revolutionary  rage  with  established  tradi- 
tion could  sink.  He  sympathized  with  it  himself. 
He  would  have  loved  to  have  flung  the  whole  sleek 
structure  of  society  into  disorder,  and  to  have  shaken 
these  feeble  rulers  out  of  their  snug  seats.  But  this 
Wone  had  not  the  spirit  of  a  wood-louse!  Had  he 
—  Romer  —  been  at  this  moment  the  arch-revolu- 
tionary, in  place  of  the  arch-tyrant,  what  a  difference 
in  method  and  result!  Did  they  think,  these  idiots, 
that  eloquent  words  and  appeals  to  Justice  and 
Charity  would  change  the  orbits  of  the  planets.? 

He  strode  impatiently  to  the  edge  of  the  tumulus. 
Yes,  there  was  certainly  something  unusual  going 
forward.  The  crowd  was  swaying  outwards,  was 
scattering  and  wavering.  Men  were  running  to  and 
fro,  tossing  their  hats  in  the  air  and  shouting.  At 
last  there  really  was  a  definite  event.  The  whole 
mass  of  the  crowd  seemed  to  be  seized  simultaneously 
with  a  single  impulse.  It  began  to  move.  It  began 
to  move  in  the  direction  of  his  new  quarries.  The 
thrill  of  battle  seized  the  heart  of  the  master  of 
Nevilton  with  an  exultant  glow.  So  they  were  really 
going  to  attempt  something  —  the  incapable  sheep! 
This  was  the  sort  of  situation  he  had  long  cried  out 
for.  To  have  an  excuse  to  meet  them,  face  to  face, 
in  a  genuine  insurrection,  this  was  worthier  of  a 
man's  energy  than  quarrelling  with  wretched  Social 
Meetings. 

He  ran  down  the  side  of  the  tumulus  and  hastened 
to  meet  the  approaching  mob.     By  leaving  the  path 


MORTIMER   ROMER  377 

and  skirting  the  edge  of  several  disused  quarries  he 
should,  he  thought,  easily  be  able  to  reach  his  new 
works  long  before  they  did.  The  tall  cranes  served 
as  a  guide.  To  his  astonishment  he  found,  on  ap- 
proaching his  objective,  that  the  mob  had  swerved, 
and  were  now  streaming  forward  in  a  long  wavering 
line,  between  the  Half  Moon  tavern  and  the  lower 
slopes,  towards  the  southern  end  of  the  hill. 

"Ah!"  he  muttered  under  his  breath,  "this  is  more 
serious!     They  are  going  to  attack  the  offices." 

By  this  time,  the  bulk  of  the  crowd  had  got  so  far 
that  it  would  have  been  impossible  for  him  to  inter- 
cept or  anticipate  them. 

Among  the  more  cautious  sight-seers  who,  mixed 
with  women  and  children,  were  trailing  slowly  in  the 
rear,  he  was  quite  certain  he  made  out  the  figures  of 
Wone  and  his  fellow-politicians.  "Just  like  him,"  he 
thought.  "He  has  stirred  them  up  with  his  speeches 
and  now  he  is  hiding  behind  them!  I  expect  he  will 
be  sneaking  off  home  presently."  The  figure  he  sup- 
posed to  be  that  of  the  Christian  Candidate  did, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  shortly  after  this,  detach  him- 
self from  the  rest  of  his  group  and  retire  quietly  and 
discreetly  towards  the  path  leading  to  Nevilton. 

Romer  retraced  his  steps  as  rapidly  as  he  could. 
He  repassed  the  tumulus,  crossed  a  somewhat  pre- 
cipitous bank  between  two  quarries,  and  emerged 
upon  the  road  that  skirts  the  western  brow  of  the 
hill.  This  road  he  followed  at  an  impetuous  pace, 
listening,  as  he  advanced,  for  any  sound  of  destruc- 
tion and  violence.  When  he  arrived  at  the  open 
level  between  the  two  largest  of  his  quarries  he  found 
himself  at  the  edge  of  a  surging  and  howling  mob. 


378  WOOD  AND  STONE 

He  could  see  over  their  heads  the  low  slate  roofs  of 
his  works,  and  he  could  see  that  someone,  mounted 
on  a  large  slab  of  stone,  was  haranguing  the  people 
near  him,  but  more  than  this  it  was  impossible  to 
make  out  and  it  was  extremely  difficult  to  get  any 
closer.  The  persons  on  the  outskirts  of  the  crowd 
were  evidently  strangers,  and  with  no  interest  in 
the  affair  at  all  beyond  excited  curiosity,  for  he  heard 
them  asking  one  another  the  most  vague  and  con- 
fused questions. 

Presently  he  observed  the  figure  of  a  policeman 
rise  behind  the  man  upon  the  stone  and  jerk  him  to 
the  ground.  This  was  followed  by  a  bewildering 
uproar.  Clenched  hands  were  raised  in  the  air,  and 
wild  cries  were  audible.  He  fancied  he  caught  the 
sound  of  the  syllable  "fire." 

Romer  was  seized  with  a  mad  lust  of  contest.  He 
struggled  desperately  to  force  his  way  through  to 
the  front,  but  the  entangled  mass  of  agitated,  per- 
spiring people  proved  an  impassable  barrier. 

He  began  hastily  summing  up  in  his  mind  what 
kind  of  destruction  they  could  achieve  that  would 
cause  him  any  serious  annoyance.  He  remembered 
with  relief  that  all  the  more  delicate  pieces  of  carved 
work  were  down  at  Nevilton  Station.  They  could 
do  little  damage  to  solid  blocks  of  stone,  which  were 
all  they  would  find  inside  those  wooden  sheds.  They 
might  injure  the  machinery  and  the  more  fragile 
of  the  tools,  but  they  could  hardly  do  even  that, 
unless  they  were  aided  by  some  of  his  own  men.  He 
wondered  if  his  own  men  —  the  men  on  strike  — 
were  among  them,  or  if  the  rioters  were  only  roughs 
from  Yeoborough.     Let  them  burn  the  sheds  down! 


MORTIMER  ROMER  379 

He  did  not  value  the  sheds.  They  could  be  replaced 
tomorrow.  Their  utmost  worth  was  hardly  the  price 
of  a  dozen  bottles  of  champagne.  It  gave  him  a 
thrill  of  grim  satisfaction  to  think  of  the  ineffectual- 
ness  of  this  horde  of  gesticulating  two-legged  creatures, 
making  vain  assaults  upon  slabs  of  impervious  rock 
Man  against  Stone!  It  was  a  pleasant  and  symbolic 
struggle.     And  it  could  only  have  one  issue. 

Finding  it  impossible  to  move  forward,  and  not 
caring  to  be  observed  by  anyone  who  knew  him 
hemmed  in  in  this  ridiculous  manner  among  staring 
females  and  jocose  youths,  Romer  edged  himself 
backwards,  and,  hot  and  breathless,  got  clear  of  the 
crowd. 

The  physical  exhaustion  of  this  effort  —  for  only 
a  man  of  considerable  strength  could  have  advanced 
an  inch  through  such  a  dense  mass  —  had  materially 
diminished  his  thirst  for  a  personal  encounter.  He 
smiled  to  himself  to  think  how  humorous  it  would 
be  if  he  could,  even  now,  overtake  the  escaping  Mr. 
Wone,  and  offer  his  rival  restorative  refreshment,  in 
the  cool  shades  of  his  garden !  For  the  prime  originals 
of  this  absurd  riot  to  be  drinking  claret-cup  upon  a 
grassy  lawn,  while  the  misled  and  deluded  populace 
were  battering  their  heads  against  the  stony  heart 
of  Leo's  Hill,  struck  Mr.  Romer  as  a  curiously  suit- 
able climax  to  the  days'  entertainment.  Hardly 
thinking  of  what  he  did,  he  clambered  up  the  side  of 
a  steep  bank,  where  a  group  of  children  were  playing, 
and  looked  across  the  valley.  Surely  that  solitary 
black  figure  retreating  so  furtively,  so  innocently, 
along  the  path  towards  the  wood,  could  be  no  one 
but  the  Christian  Candidate! 


380  WOOD   AND   STONE 

Mr.  Romer  burst  out  laughing.  The  discreet  fugi- 
tive looked  so  absurdly  characteristic  in  his  shuffling 
retirement,  that  he  felt  for  the  moment  as  if  the 
whole  incident  were  a  colossal  musical-comedy  farce. 
A  puff  of  smoke  above  the  heads  of  the  crowd,  and 
a  smell  of  burning,  made  him  serious  again.  "Damn 
them!"  he  muttered.  "They  shall  not  get  off  without 
anything  being  done." 

From  his  present  position  he  was  able  to  discern 
how  he  could  get  round  to  the  sheds.  On  their 
remoter  side  he  saw  that  the  crowd  had  considerably 
thinned  away.  He  made  out  the  figures  of  some 
policemen  there,  bending,  it  appeared,  over  something 
upon  the  ground. 

It  did  not  take  him  long  to  descend  from  his  post, 
to  skirt  the  western  side  of  the  quarries,  and  to 
reach  the  spot.  He  found  that  the  object  upon  the 
ground  was  no  other  than  his  manager  Lickwit, 
gasping  and  pallid,  with  a  streak  of  blood  running 
down  his  face.  From  the  policemen  he  learnt  that 
an  entrance  had  been  forced  into  the  sheds,  and  the 
more  violent  of  the  rioters  —  the  ones  who  had  laid 
Mr.  Lickwit  low  —  were  now  regaling  themselves  in 
that  shelter  upon  the  contents  of  a  barrel  of  cider, 
whose  hiding-place  someone  had  unearthed.  The  fire 
was  already  trampled  upon  and  extinguished.  He 
learnt  further  that  a  messenger  had  been  sent  to 
summon  more  police  to  the  spot,  and  that  it  was  to 
be  hoped  that  the  revellers  within  the  shed  would 
continue  their  opportune  tippling  until  their  arrival. 
This,  however,  was  not  what  fate  intended.  Reel- 
ing and  shouting,  the  half-a-dozen  joyous  Calibans 
emerged  from  their  retreat  and  proceeded  to  address 


MORTIMER   ROMER  381 

the  people,  all  vociferating  at  the  same  time,  and  each 
interrupting  the  other.  The  more  official  and  re- 
spectable among  the  politicians  had  either  retired 
altogether  from  the  scene  or  were  cautiously  watching 
it,  from  the  safe  obscurity  of  the  general  crowd,  and 
the  situation  around  the  stone-works  was  completely 
in  the  hands  of  the  rioters. 

Mr.  Romer,  having  done  what  he  could  for  the 
comfort  of  his  manager,  who  was  really  more  fright- 
ened than  hurt,  turned  fiercely  upon  the  aggressors. 
He  commanded  the  two  remaining  policemen  —  the 
third  was  helping  Lickwit  from  the  scene  —  to  arrest 
on  the  spot  these  turbulent  ruffians,  who  were  now 
engaged  in  laying  level  with  the  ground  a  tool-shed 
adjoining  the  one  they  had  entered.  They  were 
striking  at  the  corner-beams  of  this  erection  with 
picks  and  crow-bars.  Others  among  the  crowd,  push- 
ing their  less  courageous  neighbours  forward,  began 
throwing  stones  at  the  policemen,  uttering,  as  they 
did  so,  yells  and  threats  and  abusive  insults. 

The  mass  of  the  people  behind,  hearing  these 
yells,  and  yielding  to  a  steady  pressure  from  the 
rear,  where  more  and  more  inquisitive  persons  kept 
arriving,  began  to  sway  ominously  onward,  crowding 
more  and  more  thickly  around  the  open  space,  where 
Mr.  Romer  stood,  angrily  regarding  them. 

The  policemen  kept  looking  anxiously  towards  the 
Half  Moon  where  the  road  across  the  hill  terminated. 
They  were  evidently  very  nervous  and  extremely  de- 
sirous of  the  arrival  of  re-enforcements.  No  re- 
enforcements  coming,  however,  and  the  destruction 
of  property  continuing,  they  were  forced  to  act;  and 
drawing  their  staves,  they   made  a  determined  rush 


382  WOOD   AND   STONE 

upon  the  men  attacking  the  shed.  Had  these  persons 
not  been  already  half-drunk,  the  emissaries  of  the 
law  would  have  come  off  badly.  As  it  was,  they 
only  succeeded  in  flinging  the  rioters  back  a  few 
paces.  The  whole  crowd  moved  forward  and  a  volley 
of  stones  and  sticks  compelled  the  officials  to  retreat. 
In  their  retreat  they  endeavoured  to  carry  Mr.  Romer 
with  them,  assuring  him,  in  hurried  gasps,  that  his 
life  itself  was  in  danger.  "They'll  knock  your  head 
off,  sir  —  the  scoundrels!     Phil  Wone  has  seen  you." 

The  pale  son  of  Mr.  Wone  had  indeed  pushed  his 
way  to  the  front.  He  at  once  began  an  impassioned 
oration. 

"There  he  is  —  the  devil  himself!"  he  shouted, 
panting  with  excitement.  "Do  for  him,  friends! 
Throw  him  into  one  of  his  own  pits  —  the  blood- 
sucker, the  assassin,  the  murderer  of  the  people!" 

Wild  memories  of  historic  passages  rushed  through 
the  young  anarchist's  brain.  He  waved  his  arms 
savagely,  goading  on  his  companions.  His  face  was 
livid.  Mr.  Romer  moved  towards  him,  his  head 
thrown  back  and  a  contemptuous  smile  upon  his 
face. 

The  drunken  ring  leaders,  recognizing  their  heredi- 
tary terror  —  the  local  magistrate  —  reeled  backwards 
in  sudden  panic.  Others  in  the  front  line  of  the 
crowd,  knowing  Mr.  Romer  by  sight,  stood  stock  still 
and  gaped  foolishly  or  tried  to  shuffle  off  unobserved. 
A  few  strangers  who  were  there,  perceiving  the  pres- 
ence of  a  formidable-looking  gentleman,  assumed  at 
once  that  he  was  Lord  Tintinhull  or  the  Earl  of 
Glastonbury  and  made  frantic  efforts  to  escape.  The 
crowd  at  the  back,   conscious  that  a  reverse   move- 


MORTIMER   ROMER  383 

ment  had  begun,  became  alarmed.  Cries  were  raised 
that  the  "military"  had  come.  "They  are  going  to 
fire!"  shouted  one  voice,  and  several  women  screamed. 

Philip  Wone  lifted  up  his  voice  again,  pointing 
with  outstretched  arm  at  his  enemy,  and  calling  upon 
the  crowd  to  advance. 

"The  serpent!  —  the  devil-fish!  —  the  bread-stealer ! 
—  the  money-eater!"  he  yelled.  "Cast  him  into  his 
own  pit,  bury  him  in  his  own  quarries!" 

It  was  perhaps  fortunate  for  Mr.  Romer  at  that 
moment  that  his  adversary  was  this  honest  youth 
in  place  of  a  more  hypocritical  leader.  An  English 
crowd,  even  though  sprinkled  with  a  leaven  of  angry 
strikers,  only  grows  puzzled  and  bewildered  when 
it  hears  its  enemy  referred  to  as  "devil-fish"  and 
"assassin." 

The  enemy  at  this  moment  took  full  advantage  of 
their  bewilderment.  He  deliberately  drew  out  his 
cigarette-case  and  lighting  a  cigarette,  made  a  gesture 
as  if  driving  back  a  flock  of  sheep.  The  crowd 
showed  further  signs  of  panic.  But  the  young  anar- 
chist was  not  to  be  silenced. 

"Look  round  you,  friends,"  he  shouted.  "Here  is 
this  man  defying  you  on  the  very  spot  where  you 
work  for  him  day  and  night,  where  your  descendants 
will  work  for  his  descendants  day  and  night!  What 
are  you  afraid  of?  This  man  did  not  make  this  hill 
bring  forth  stone,  though  it  is  stone,  instead  of  bread, 
that  he  would  willingly  give  your  children!" 

Mr.  Romer  gave  a  sign  to  the  policemen  and  ap- 
proached a  step  nearer.  The  cider-drinkers  had 
already  moved  off.  The  crowd  began  to  melt 
away. 


384  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"The  very  earth,"  went  on  the  young  man,  "cries 
aloud  to  you  to  put  an  end  to  this  tyranny!  Do  you 
realize  that  this  is  the  actual  place  where  in  one  grand 
revolt  the  men  of  Mid  Wessex  rose  against  the  — " 

He  was  interrupted  by  a  man  behind  him  —  a 
poacher  from  an  outlying  hamlet.  "Chuck  it,  Phil 
Wone!     Us  knows  all  about  this  'ere  job." 

Mr.  Romer  raised  his  hand.  The  policemen  seized 
the  young  man  by  the  arms,  one  on  either  side.  He 
seemed  hardly  to  notice  them,  and  went  on  in  a  loud 
resonant  voice  that  rang  across  the  valley. 

"It  will  end!  It  will  end,  this  evil  day!  Already 
the  new  age  is  beginning.  These  robbers  of  the  people 
had  better  make  haste  with  their  plundering,  for  the 
hour  is  approaching!  Where  is  your  priest.''"  —  he 
struggled  violently  with  his  captors,  turning  towards 
the  rapidly  retreating  crowd,  "where  is  your  vicar, 
—  your  curer  of  souls?  He  talks  to  you  of  submis- 
sion, and  love,  and  obedience,  and  duty.  What  does 
this  man  care  for  these  things?  It  is  under  this 
talk  of  "love"  that  you  are  betrayed!  It  is  under 
this  talk  of  "duty,"  that  your  children  have  the 
bread  taken  from  their  mouths!  But  the  hour  will 
come; — yes,  you  may  smile,"  he  addressed  himself 
directly  to  Mr.  Romer  now,  "but  you  will  not  smile 
for  long.  Your  fate  is  already  written  down!  It  is 
as  sure  as  this  rain,  —  as  sure  as  this  storm!" 

He  was  silent,  and  making  no  further  resistance, 
let  himself  be  carried  off  by  the  two  officials. 

The  rain  he  spoke  of  was  indeed  beginning.  Heavy 
drops,  precursors  of  what  seemed  likely  to  be  a 
tropical  deluge,  fell  upon  the  broken  wood-work,  upon 
the   half-burnt   bracken,    upon    the   slabs   of    Leonian 


MORTIMER   ROMER  385 

stone,  and  upon  the  trampled  grass.  They  also  fell 
upon  Mr.  Romer's  silver  match-box  as  he  selected 
another  cigarette  of  his  favourite  brand,  and  walked 
slowly  and  smilingly  away  in  the  direction  of  Nevil- 
ton. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
HULLAWAY 

I  SEE,"  said  Luke  Andersen  to  his  brother,  as  they 
sat  at  breakfast  in  the  station-master's  kitchen, 
about  a  fortnight  after  the  riot  on  Leo's  Hill, 
"I  see  that  Romer  has  withdrawn  his  charge  against 
young  Wone.  It  seems  that  the  magistrates  set  him 
free  yesterday,  on  Romer's  own  responsibility.  So 
the  case  will  not  come  up  at  all.  What  do  you  make 
of  that?" 

"He  is  a  wiser  man  than  I  imagined,"  said  James. 

"And  that's  not  all!"  cried  his  brother  blowing  the 
cigarette  ashes  from  the  open  paper  in  front  of  him. 
"It  appears  the  strike  is  in  a  good  way  of  being 
settled  by  those  damned  delegates.  We  were  idiots 
to  trust  them.  I  knew  it.  I  told  the  men  so.  But 
they  are  all  such  hopeless  fools.  No  doubt  Romer 
has  found  some  way  of  getting  round  them!  The 
talk  is  now  of  arbitration,  and  a  commissioner  from 
the  government.  You  mark  my  words,  Daddy  Jim, 
we  shall  be  back  working  again  by  Monday." 

"But  we  shall  get  the  chief  thing  we  wanted,  after 
all  —  if  Lickwit  is  removed,"  said  James,  rising  from 
the  table  and  going  to  the  window,  "I  know  I  shall 
be  quite  satisfied  myself,  if  I  don't  see  that  rascal's 
face  any  more." 

"The  poor  wretch  has  collapsed  altogether,  so  they 
said  down  at  the  inn  last  night,"  Luke  put  in.     "My 


HULLAWAY  387 


belief  is  that  Romer  has  now  staked  everything  on 
getting  into  Parliament  and  is  ready  to  do  anything 
to  propitiate  the  neighbourhood.  If  that's  his  line, 
he'll  succeed.  He'll  out-raanoeuvre  our  friend  Wone 
at  every  step.  When  a  man  of  his  type  once  tries 
the  conciliatory  game  be  becomes  irresistible.  That 
is  what  these  stupid  employers  so  rarely  realize.  No 
doubt  that's  his  policy  in  stopping  the  process 
against  Philip.  He's  a  shrewd  fellow  this  Romer  — • 
and  I  shouldn't  wonder  if,  when  the  strike  is  settled, 
he  became  the  most  popular  landlord  in  the  country. 
Wone  did  for  himself  by  sneaking  off  home  that  day, 
when  things  looked  threatening.  They  were  talking 
about  that  in  Yeoborough.  I  shouldn't  be  surprised 
if  it  didn't  lose  him  the  election." 

"I  hope  not,"  said  James  Andersen  gazing  out  of 
the  window  at  the  gathering  clouds.  "I  should  be 
sorry  to  see  that  happen." 

"I  should  be  damned  glad!"  cried  his  brother, 
pushing  back  his  chair  and  luxuriously  sipping  his 
final  cup  of  tea.  "My  sympathies  are  all  with  Ro- 
mer in  this  business.  He  has  acted  magnanimously. 
He  has  acted  shrewdly.  I  would  sooner,  any  day, 
be  under  the  control  of  a  man  like  him,  than  see  a 
sentimental  charlatan  like  Wone  get  into  Parliament." 

"You  are  unfair,  my  friend,"  said  the  elder  brother, 
opening  the  lower  sash  of  the  window  and  letting  in 
such  a  draught  of  rainy  wind  that  he  was  immediately 
compelled  to  re-close  it,  "you  are  thoroughly  unfair. 
Wone  is  not  in  the  least  a  charlatan.  He  believes 
every  word  he  says,  and  he  says  a  great  many  things 
that  are  profoundly  true.  I  cannot  see,"  he  went  on, 
turning    round    and    confronting    his    equable    relative 


388  WOOD  AND  STONE 

with  a  perturbed  and  troubled  face,  "why  you  have 
got  your  knife  into  Wone  in  this  extreme  manner. 
Of  course  he  is  conceited  and  long-winded,  but  the 
man  is  genuinely  sincere.  I  call  him  rather  a  pathetic 
figure." 

"He  looked  pathetic  enough  when  he  sneaked  off 
after  that  riot,  leaving  Philip  in  the  hands  of  the 
police." 

"It  annoys  me  the  way  you  speak,"  returned  the 
elder  brother,  in  growing  irritation.  "What  right 
have  you  to  call  the  one  man's  discretion  cowardice, 
and  the  other's  wise  diplomacy.''  I  don't  see  that  it 
was  any  more  cowardice  for  Wone  to  protest  against 
a  riot,  than  for  Romer  to  back  down  before  public 
opinion  as  he  seems  now  to  have  done.  Besides, 
who  can  blame  a  fellow  for  wanting  to  avoid  a  scene 
like  that?  I  know  you  wouldn't  have  cared  to  en- 
counter those  Yeoborough  roughs." 

"Old  Romer  encountered  them,"  retorted  Luke. 
"They  say  he  smoked  a  cigarette  in  their  faces,  and 
just  waved  them  away,  as  if  they  were  a  cloud  of 
gnats.     I  love  a  man  who  can  do  that  sort  of  thing!" 

"That's  right!"  cried  the  elder  brother  growing 
thoroughly  angry.  "That's  the  true  Yellow  Press 
attitude!  Here  we  have  one  of  your  'still,  strong 
men,'  afraid  of  no  mob  on  earth !  I  know  them  — 
these  strong  men!  Its  easy  enough  to  be  calm  and 
strong  when  you  have  a  banking-account  like  Romer's, 
and  all  the  police  in  the  county  on  your  side?" 

"Brother  Lickwit  will  not  forget  that  afternoon," 
remarked  Luke,  taking  a  rose  from  a  vase  on  the 
table  and  putting  it  into  his  button-hole. 

"Yes,    Lickwit    is    the    scape-goat,"    rejoined    the 


HULLAWAY  389 


other.  "Lickwit  will  have  to  leave  the  place,  broken 
in  his  nerves,  and  ruined  in  his  reputation,  while 
his  master  gets  universal  praise  for  magnanimity 
and  generosity!  That  is  the  ancient  trick  of  these 
crafty  oppressors." 

"Why  do  you  use  such  grand  words.  Daddy  Jim?" 
said  Luke  smiling  and  stretching  out  his  legs.  "It's 
all  nonsense,  this  talk  about  oppressors  and  oppressed. 
The  world  only  contains  two  sorts  of  people  —  the 
capable  ones  and  the  incapable  ones.  I  am  all  on  the 
side  of  the  capable  ones!" 

"I  suppose  that  is  why  you  are  treating  little 
Annie  Bristow  so  abominably!"  cried  James,  losing 
all  command  of  his  temper. 

Luke  made  an  indescribable  grimace  which  con- 
verted his  countenance  in  a  moment  from  that  of 
a  gentle  faun  to  that  of  an  ugly  Satyr. 

"Ho!  ho!"  he  exclaimed,  "so  we  are  on  that  tack 
are  we?  And  please  tell  me,  most  virtuous  moralist, 
why  I  am  any  worse  in  my  attitude  to  Annie,  than 
you  in  your  attitude  to  Ninsy?  It  seems  to  me  we 
are  in  the  same  box  over  these  little  jobs." 

"Damn  you!"  cried  James  Andersen,  walking 
fiercely  up  to  his  brother  and  trembling  with  rage. 

But  Luke  sipped  his  tea  with  perfect  equanimity. 

"It's  no  good  damning  me,"  he  said  quietly. 
"That  will  not  alter  the  situation.  The  fact  remains, 
that  both  of  us  have  found  our  little  village-girls 
rather  a  nuisance.  I  don't  blame  you.  I  don't 
blame  myself.  These  things  are  inevitable.  They  are 
part  of  the  system  of  the  universe.  Little  girls  have 
to  learn  —  as  the  world  moves  round  —  that  they 
can't    have    everything    they    want.      I    don't    know 


390  WOOD   AND   STONE 

whether  you  intend  to  marry  Ninsy?     I  haven't  the 
slightest  intention  of  marrying  Annie." 

"But  you've  been  making  love  to  her  for  the  last 
two  months!  You  told  me  so  yourself  when  we  met 
her  at  Hullaway!" 

"And  you  weren't  so  very  severe  then,  were  you, 
Daddy  Jim?  It's  only  because  I  have  annoyed  you 
this  morning  that  you  bring  all  this  up.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  Annie  is  far  less  mad  about  me  than  Ninsy 
is  about  you.  She's  already  flirting  with  Bob  Granger. 
Anyone  can  see  she's  perfectly  happy.  She's  been 
happy  ever  since  she  made  a  fool  of  me  over  Gladys' 
ring.  As  long  as  a  girl  knows  she's  put  you  in  a 
ridiculous  position,  she'll  very  soon  console  herself. 
No  doubt  she'll  make  Granger  marry  her  before  the 
summer's  over.  Ninsy  is  quite  a  different  person. 
Annie  and  I  take  our  little  affair  in  precisely  the  same 
spirit.  I  am  no  more  to  blame  than  she  is.  But 
Ninsy's  case  is  different.  Ninsy  is  seriously  and 
desperately  in  love  with  you.  And  her  invalid  state 
makes  the  situation  a  much  more  embarrassing  one. 
I  think  my  position  is  infinitely  less  complicated  than 
yours,  brother  Jim!" 

James  Andersen's  face  became  convulsed  with 
fury.  He  stretched  out  his  arm  towards  his  brother, 
and  extended  a  threatening  fore-finger. 

"Young  man,"  he  cried,  "I  will  never  forgive  you 
for  this!" 

Having  uttered  these  words  he  rushed  incontinently 
out  of  the  room,  and,  bare-headed  as  he  was,  pro- 
ceeded to  stride  across  the  fields,  in  a  direction  oppo- 
site from  that  which  led  to  Nevilton. 

The     younger     brother     shrugged     his     shoulders, 


HULLAWAY  391 


drained  his  tea-cup,  and  meditatively  lit  another 
cigarette.  The  stone-works  being  closed,  he  had  all 
the  day  before  him  in  which  to  consider  this  unfor- 
tunate rupture.  At  the  present  moment,  however, 
all  he  did  was  to  call  their  landlady  —  the  station- 
master's  buxom  wife  —  and  affably  help  her  in  the 
removal  and  washing  up  of  the  breakfast  things. 

Luke  was  an  adept  in  all  household  matters.  His 
supple  fingers  and  light  feminine  movements  were 
equal  to  almost  any  task,  and  while  occupied  in  such 
things  his  gay  and  humorous  conversation  made  any 
companion  of  his  labour  an  enviable  person.  Mrs. 
Round,  their  landlady,  adored  him.  There  was 
nothing  she  would  not  have  done  at  his  request;  and 
Lizzie,  Betty,  and  Polly,  her  three  little  daughters, 
loved  him  more  than  they  loved  their  own  father. 
Having  concerned  himself  for  more  than  an  hour  with 
these  agreeable  people,  Luke  took  his  hat  and  stick, 
and  strolling  lazily  along  the  railroad-line  railings, 
surveyed  with  inquisitive  interest  the  motley  group 
of  persons  who  were  waiting,  on  the  further  side, 
for  the  approach  of  a  train. 

A  little  apart  from  the  rest,  seated  on  a  bench 
beside  a  large  empty  basket,  he  observed  the  re- 
doubtable Mrs.  Fringe.  Between  this  lady  and  him- 
self there  had  existed  for  the  last  two  years  a  sort 
of  conspiracy  of  gossip.  Like  many  other  middle- 
aged  women  in  Nevilton,  Mrs.  Fringe  had  made  a 
pet  and  confidant  of  this  attractive  young  man,  who 
played,  in  spite  of  his  mixed  birth,  a  part  almost 
analogous  to  that  of  an  affable  and  ingratiating 
cadet  of  some  noble  family. 

He  passed  through  the  turn-stile,  crossed  the  track, 


392  WOOD  AND  STONE 

and  advanced  slowly  up  the  platform.  His  plump 
Gossip,  observing  him  afar  off,  rose  and  moved  to 
meet  him,  her  basket  swinging  in  her  hand  and  a 
radiant  smile  upon  her  face.  It  was  like  an  encounter 
between  some  Pantagruelian  courtier  and  some  co- 
lossal Gargamelle.  They  stood  together,  in  the  wind, 
at  the  extreme  edge  of  the  platform.  Luke,  who 
was  dressed  so  well  that  it  would  have  been  im- 
possible to  distinguish  him  from  any  golden  youth 
from  Oxford  or  Cambridge,  whispered  shameless 
scandal  into  the  lady's  ears,  from  beneath  the  shadow 
of  his  panama-hat.  She  on  her  side  was  equally 
confidential. 

"There  was  a  pretty  scene  down  our  way  last 
night,"  she  said.  "Miss  Seldom  came  in  with  some 
books  for  my  young  Reverend  and,  Lord!  they  did 
have  an  ado.  I  heard  'un  shouting  at  one  another 
as  though  them  were  rampin'  mad.  My  master  'ee 
were  hollerin'  Holy  Scripture  like  as  he  were  dazed, 
and  the  young  lady  she  were  answerin'  'im  with  God 
knows  what.  From  all  I  could  gather  of  it,  that  girl 
had  got  some  devil's  tale  on  Miss  Gladys.  'Tweren't 
as  though  she  did  actually  name  her  by  name,  as  you 
might  say,  but  she  pulled  her  hair  and  scratched  her 
like  any  crazy  cat,  sideways-like  and  cross-wise.  It 
seems  she'd  got  hold  of  some  story  about  that  foreign 
young  woman  and  Miss  Gladys  having  her  knife  into 
'er,  but  I  saw  well  enough  what  was  at  the  bottom 
of  it  and  I  won't  conceal  it  from  'ee,  my  dear.  She 
do  want  'im  for  herself.  That's  the  long  and  short. 
She  do  want  'im  for  herself!" 

"What  were  they  disputing  about?"  asked  Luke 
eagerly.     "Did  you  hear  their  words.?" 


HULLAWAY  393 


"  'Tis  no  good  arstin'  me  about  their  words," 
replied  Mrs.  Fringe.  "Those  long- windy  dilly-dallies 
do  sound  to  me  no  more  than  the  burbering  of  blow- 
flies, God  save  us  from  such  words!  I'm  not  a 
reading  woman  and  I  don't  care  who  knows  it.  But 
I  know  when  a  wench  is  moon-daft  on  a  fellow.  I 
knows  that,  my  dear,  and  I  knows  when  she's  got  a 
tale  on  another  girl!" 

"Did  she  talk  about  Catholicism  to  him.'*"  enquired 
Luke. 

"I  won't  say  as  she  didn't  bring  something  of  that 
sort  in,"  replied  his  friend.  "But  'twas  Miss  Gladys 
wot  worried  'er.  Any  fool  could  see  that.  'Tis  my 
experience  that  when  a  girl  and  a  fellow  get  hot  on 
any  of  these  dilly-dally  argimints,  there's  always 
some  other  maid  biding  round  the  corner." 

"I've  just  had  a  row  with  James,"  remarked  the 
stone-carver.  "He's  gone  off  in  a  fury  over  towards 
Hullaway." 

Mrs  Fringe  put  down  her  basket  and  glanced  up 
and  down  the  platform.  Then  she  laid  her  hand  on 
the  young  man's  arm. 

"I  wouldn't  say  what  I  do  now  say,  to  anyone,  but 
thee  own  self,  dearie.  And  I  wouldn't  say  it  to  thee 
if  it  hadn't  been  worriting  me  for  some  merciful  long 
while.  And  what's  more  I  wouldn't  say  it,  if  I  didn't 
know  what  you  and  your  Jim  are  to  one  another. 
'More  than  brothers,'  is  what  the  whole  village  do 
say  of  ye!" 

"Go  on  —  go  on  —  Mrs.  Fringe!"  cried  Luke. 
"That  curst  signal's  down,  and  I  can  hear  the  train." 

"There  be  other  trains  than  wot  run  on  them 
irons,"  pronounced   Mrs.   Fringe  sententiously,   "and 


394  WOOD  AND   STONE 

if  you  aren't  careful,  one  such  God  Almighty's  train 
will  run  over  that  brother  of  yours,  sooner  or  later." 

Luke  looked  apprehensively  up  the  long  converging 
steel  track.  The  gloom  of  the  day  and  the  ominous 
tone  of  his  old  gossip  affected  him  very  unpleasantly. 
He  began  to  wish  that  there  was  not  a  deep  muddy 
pond  under  the  Hullaway  elms. 

"What  on  earth  do  you  mean?"  he  cried,  adding 
impatiently,  "Oh  damn  that  train!"  as  a  cloud  of 
smoke  made  itself  visible  in  the  distance. 

"Only  this,  dearie,"  said  the  woman  picking  up 
her  basket,  "only  this.  If  you  listen  to  me  you'd 
sooner  dig  your  own  grave  than  have  words  wdth 
brother.  Brother  be  not  one  wot  can  stand  these 
fimble-fambles  same  as  you  and  I.  I  know  wot  I 
do  say,  cos  I  was  privileged,  under  Almighty  God, 
to  see  the  end  of  your  dear  mother." 

"I  know  —  I  know  — "  cried  the  young  man,  "but 
what  do  you  mean?" 

Mrs.  Fringe  thrust  her  arm  through  the  handle  of 
her  basket  and  turned  to  meet  the  incoming  train. 

"  'Twas  when  I  lived  with  my  dear  husband  down 
at  Willow-Grove,"  she  said.  "  'Twas  a  stone's  throw 
there  from  where  you  and  Jim  were  born,  I  always 
feared  he  would  go,  same  as  she  went,  sooner  or  later. 
He  talks  like  her.  He  looks  like  her.  He  treats  a 
person  in  the  way  she  treated  a  person,  poor  moon- 
struck darling!  'Twas  all  along  of  your  father.  She 
couldn't  bide  him  along-side  of  her  in  the  last  days. 
And  he  knew  it  as  well  as  you  and  I  know  it.  But 
do  'ee  think  it  made  any  difference  to  him?  Not  a 
bit,  dearie!     Not  one  little  bit!" 

The    train    had    now    stopped,    and    with    various 


HULLAWAY  395 


humorous  observations,  addressed  to  porters  and 
passengers  indiscriminately,  Mrs.  Fringe  took  her 
place  in  a  carriage. 

Heedless  of  being  overheard,  Luke  addressed  her 
through  the  window  of  the  compartment.  "But 
what  about  James?  What  were  you  saying  about 
James?" 

"  'Tis  too  long  a  tale  to  tell  'ee,  dearie,"  murmured 
the  woman  breathlessly.  "There  be  need  now  of  all 
my  blessed  wits  to  do  business  for  the  Reverend." 
There,  look  at  that!"  She  waved  at  him  a  crumpled 
piece  of  paper.  "Beyond  all  thinking  I've  got  to 
fetch  him  books  from  Slitly's.  Books,  by  the  Lord! 
As  if  he  hadn't  too  many  of  the  darned  things  for  his 
poor  brain  already!" 

The  engine  emitted  a  portentious  puff  of  smoke,  and 
the  train  began  to  move.  Luke  walked  by  the  side 
of  his  friend's  window,  his  hand  on  the  sash. 

"You  think  it  is  inadvisable  to  thwart  my  brother, 
then,"  he  said,  "in  any  way  at  all.  You  think  I 
must  humour  him.  You  are  afraid  if  I  don't  — " 
His  walk  was  of  necessity  quickened  into  a  run. 

"It's  a  long  story,  dearie,  a  long  story.  But  I  had 
the  privilege  under  God  Almighty  of  knowing  your 
blessed  mother  when  she  was  called,  and  I  tell  you  it 
makes  my  heart  ache  to  see  James  going  along  the 
same  road  as  — ^" 

Her  voice  was  extinguished  by  the  noise  of  wheels 
and  steam.  Luke,  exhausted,  was  compelled  to  relax 
his  hold.  The  rest  of  the  carriages  passed  him  with 
accumulated  speed  and  he  watched  the  train  dis- 
appear. In  his  excitement  he  had  advanced  far  be- 
yond the  limits  of  the  platform.     He  found  himself 


396  WOOD   AND   STONE 

standing  in  a  clump  of  yellow  rag- wort,  just  behind 
his  own  stone-cutter's  shed. 

He  gazed  up  the  track,  along  which  the  tantalizing 
lady  had  been  so  inexorably  snatched  away.  The 
rails  had  a  dull  whitish  glitter  but  their  look  was 
bleak  and  grim.  They  suggested,  in  their  narrow 
merciless  perspective,  cutting  the  pastures  in  twain, 
the  presence  of  some  remorseless  mechanical  Will 
carving  its  purpose,  blindly  and  pitilessly,  out  of 
the  innocent  waywardness  of  thoughtless  living 
things. 

An  immense  and  indefinable  foreboding  passed, 
like  the  insertion  of  a  cold,  dead  finger,  through  the 
heart  of  the  young  man.  Fantastic  and  terrible 
images  pursued  one  another  through  his  agitated 
brain.  He  saw  his  brother  lying  submerged  in 
HuUaway  Pond,  while  a  group  of  frightened  chil- 
dren stood,  in  white  pinafores,  stared  at  him  with 
gaping  mouths.  He  saw  himself  arriving  upon  this 
scene.  He  even  went  so  far  as  to  repeat  to  himself 
the  sort  of  cry  that  such  a  sight  might  naturally 
draw  from  his  lips,  his  insatiable  dramatic  sense 
making  use,  in  this  way,  of  his  very  panic,  to  project 
its  irrepressible  puppet-show.  His  brother's  words, 
"Young  man,  I  will  never  forgive  you  for  this," 
rose  luridly  before  him.  He  saw  them  written  along 
the  edge  of  a  certain  dark  cloud  which  hung  threaten- 
ingly over  the  Hullaway  horizon.  He  felt  precisely 
what  he  would  feel  when  he  saw  them  —  luminously 
phosphorescent  —  in  the  indescribable  mud  and  green- 
ish weeds  that  surrounded  his  brother's  dead  face. 
A  sickening  sense  of  loss  and  emptiness  went  shiver- 
ing through  him.     He  felt  as  though  nothing  in  the 


HULLAWAY  397 


ivorld  was  of  the  least  importance  except  the  life  of 
Fames  Andersen. 

With  hurried  steps  he  re-crossed  the  line,  re-passed 
:he  turn-stile,  and  began  following  the  direction 
:aken  by  his  brother  just  two  hours  before.  Never 
lad  the  road  to  Hullaway  seemed  so  long! 

Half-way  there,  where  the  road  took  a  devious 
:urn,  he  left  it,  and  entering  the  fields  again,  followed 
1  vaguely  outlined  foot-path.  This  also  betraying 
lim,  or  seeming  to  betray  him,  by  its  departure 
'rom  the  straight  route,  he  began  crossing  the  mead- 
ows with  feverish  directness,  climbing  over  hedges  and 
ditches  with  the  desperate  pre-occupation  of  one 
pursued  by  invisible  pursuers.  The  expression  upon 
lis  face,  as  he  hurried  forward  in  this  manner,  was 
the  expression  of  a  man  who  has  everything  he  values 
it  stake.  A  casual  acquaintance  would  never  have 
supposed  that  the  equable  countenance  of  Luke  An- 
dersen had  the  power  to  look  so  haggard,  so  drawn, 
3o  troubled.  He  struck  the  road  again  less  than 
hsdi  a  mile  from  his  destination.  Why  he  was  so 
certain  that  Hullaway  was  the  spot  he  sought,  he 
:ould  hardly  have  explained.  It  was,  however,  one 
3f  his  own  favourite  walks  on  rainless  evenings  and 
Sunday  afternoons,  and  quite  recently  he  had  several 
times  persuaded  his  brother  to  accompany  him.  He 
liimself  was  wont  to  haunt  the  place  and  its  sur- 
roundings, because  of  the  fact  that,  about  a  mile  to 
the  west  of  it,  there  stood  an  isolated  glove-factory 
to  which  certain  of  the  Nevilton  girls  were  accustomed 
to  make  their  way  across  the  field-paths. 

Hullaway  village  was  a  very  small  place,  consider- 
ably more  remote  from  the  world  than  Nevilton,  and 


398  WOOD  AND   STONE 

attainable  only  by  narrow  lanes.  The  centre  of  it 
was  the  great  muddy  stagnant  pond  which  now  so 
dominated  Luke's  alarmed  imagination.  Near  the 
pond  was  a  group  of  elms,  of  immense  antiquity,  — 
many  of  them  mere  stumps  of  trees,  —  but  all  of 
them  possessed  of  wide-spreading  prominent  roots, 
and  deeply  indented  hollow  trunks  worn  as  smooth 
as  ancient  household  furniture,  by  the  constant 
fumbling  and  scrambling  of  generations  of  Hullaway 
children. 

The  only  other  objects  of  interest  in  the  place,  were 
a  small,  unobtrusive  church,  built,  like  everything 
else  in  the  neighborhood,  of  Leonian  stone,  and  an 
ancient  farm-house  surrounded  by  a  high  manorial 
wall.  Beneath  one  of  the  Hullaway  Elms  stood  an 
interesting  relic  of  a  ruder  age,  in  the  shape  of  some 
well-worn  stocks,  now  as  pleasant  a  seat  for  rural 
gossips  as  they  were  formerly  an  unpleasant  pillory 
for  rural  malefactors. 

As  Luke  Andersen  approached  this  familiar  spot  he 
observed  with  a  certain  vague  irritation  the  well- 
known  figure  of  one  of  his  most  recent  Nevilton 
enchantresses.  The  girl  was  no  other,  in  fact,  than 
that  shy  companion  of  Annie  Bristow  who  had  been 
amusing  herself  with  them  in  the  Fountain  Square 
on  the  occasion  of  Mr.  Clavering's  ill-timed  inter- 
vention. At  this  moment  she  was  sauntering  negli- 
gently along,  on  a  high-raised  path  of  narrow  paved 
flag-stones,  such  paths  being  a  peculiarity  of  Hulla- 
way, due  to  the  prevalence  of  heavy  autumn  floods. 

The  girl  was  evidently  bound  for  the  glove-factory, 
for  she  swung  a  large  bundle  as  she  walked,  resting 
it  idly  every  now  and  then,  on  any  available  wall  or 


HULLAWAY  399 


-ail  or  close-cut  hedge,  along  which  she  passed.  She 
ivas  an  attractive  figure,  tall,  willowy,  and  lithe,  and 
>he  walked  in  that  lingering,  swaying  voluptuous 
manner  which  gives  to  the  movements  of  maidens  of 
ler  type  a  sort  of  provocative  challenge.  Luke,  ad- 
vancing along  the  road  behind  her,  caught  himself 
idmiring,  in  spite  of  his  intense  preoccupation,  the 
dluring  swing  of  her  walk  and  the  captivating  lines 
)f  her  graceful  person. 

The  moment  was  approaching  that  he  had  so  fan- 
:astically  dreaded,  the  moment  of  his  first  glance  at 
Hullaway  Great  Pond.  He  was  already  relieved  to 
;ee  no  signs  of  anything  unusual  in  the  air  of  the 
)lace,  —  but  the  imaged  vision  of  his  brother's 
irowned  body  still  hovered  before  him,  and  that 
atal  "I'll  never  forgive  you  for  this!"  still  rang  in 
lis  ears. 

His  mind  all  this  while  was  working  with  extraor- 
linary  rapidity  and  he  was  fully  conscious  of  the 
grotesque  irrelevance  of  this  lapse  into  the  ingrained 
labit  of  wanton  admiration.  Quickly,  in  a  flash  of 
ightning,  he  reviewed  all  his  amorous  adventures  and 
lis  frivolous  philanderings.  How  empty,  how  bleak, 
low  impossible,  all  such  pleasures  seemed,  without 
he  dark  stooping  figure  of  this  companion  of  his 
loul  as  their  taciturn  background!  He  looked  at 
Phyllis  Santon  with  a  sudden  savage  resolution,  and 
nade  a  quaint  sort  of  vow  in  the  depths  of  his  heart. 

"I'll  never  speak  to  the  wench  again  or  look  at  her 
igain,"  he  said  to  himself,  "if  I  find  Daddy  Jim  safe 
md  sound,  and  if  he  forgives  me!" 

He  hurried  past  her,  almost  at  a  run,  and  arrived 
it   the   centre   of    Hullaway.      There   was   the    Great 


400  WOOD  AND   STONE 

Pond,  with  its  low  white-washed  stone  parapet.  There 
were  the  ancient  elm-trees  and  the  stocks.  There 
also  were  the  white-pinafored  infants  playing  in  the 
hollow  aperture  of  the  oldest  among  the  trees.  But 
the  slimy  surface  of  the  water  was  utterly  undisturbed 
save  by  two  or  three  assiduous  ducks  who  at  intervals 
plunged  beneath  it. 

He  drew  an  immense  sigh  of  relief  and  glanced 
casually  round.  Phyllis  had  not  failed  to  perceive 
him.  With  a  shy  little  friendly  smile  she  advanced 
towards  him.  His  vow  was  already  in  some  danger. 
He  waved  her  a  hasty  greeting  but  did  not  take  her 
hand. 

"You'd  better  put  yourself  into  the  stocks,"  he 
said,  covering  with  a  smile  the  brutality  of  his  neglect, 
"until  I  come  back!     I  have  to  find  James." 

Leaving  her  standing  in  mute  consternation,  he 
rushed  off  to  the  churchyard  on  the  further  side  of 
the  little  common.  There  was  a  certain  spot  here, 
under  the  shelter  of  the  Manor  wall,  where  Luke 
and  his  brother  had  spent  several  delicious  afternoons, 
moralizing  upon  the  quaint  epitaphs  around  them, 
and  smoking  cigarettes.  Luke  felt  as  if  he  were 
almost  sure  to  find  James  stretched  out  at  length 
before  a  certain  old  tombstone  whose  queer  appeal 
to  the  casual  intruder  had  always  especially  attracted 
him.  Both  brothers  had  a  philosophical  mania  for 
these  sepulchral  places,  and  the  Hullaway  graveyard 
was  even  more  congenial  to  their  spirit  than  the 
Nevilton  one,  perhaps  because  this  latter  was  so 
dominatingly  possessed  by  their  own  dead. 

Luke  entered  the  enclosure  through  a  wide-open 
wooden  gate  and  glanced  quickly  round  him.     There 


HULLAWAY  401 


was  the  Manor  wall,  as  mellow  and  sheltering  as 
ever,  even  on  such  a  day  of  clouds.  There  was  their 
favourite  tombstone,  with  its  long  inscription  to  the 
defunct  seignorial  house.  But  of  James  Andersen 
there  was  not  the  remotest  sign. 

Where  the  devil  had  his  angry  brother  gone? 
Luke's  passionate  anxiety  began  to  give  place  to  a 
certain  indignant  reaction.  Why  were  people  so 
ridiculous?  These  volcanic  outbursts  of  ungoverned 
emotion  on  trifling  occasions  were  just  the  things 
that  spoiled  the  harmony  and  serenity  of  life. 
Where,  on  earth,  could  James  have  slipped  off  to? 
He  remembered  that  they  had  more  than  once  gone 
together  to  the  King's  Arms  —  the  unpretentious 
Hullaway  tavern.  It  was  just  within  the  bounds 
of  possibility  that  the  wanderer,  finding  their  other 
haunts  chill  and  unappealing,  had  taken  refuge 
there. 

He  recrossed  the  common,  waved  his  hand  to 
Phyllis,  who  seemed  to  have  taken  his  speech  quite 
seriously  and  was  patiently  seated  on  the  stocks,  and 
made  his  way  hurriedly  to  the  little  inn. 

Yes  — there,  ensconced  in  a  corner  of  the  high  settle, 
with  a  half-finished  tankard  of  ale  by  his  side,  was 
his  errant  brother. 

James  rose  at  once  to  greet  him,  showing  complete 
friendliness,  and  very  small  surprise.  He  seemed  to 
have  been  drinking  more  than  his  wont,  however, 
for  he  immediately  sank  back  again  into  his  corner, 
and  regarded  his  brother  with  a  queer  absent-minded 
look. 

Luke  ordered  a  glass  of  cider  and  sat  down  close 
to  him  on  the  settle. 


402  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"I  am  sorry,"  he  whispered,  laying  his  hand  on 
his  brother's  knee.  "I  didn't  mean  to  annoy  you. 
What  you  said  was  quite  true.  I  treated  Annie  very 
badly.  And  Ninsy  is  altogether  different.  You'll 
forgive  me,  won't  you.  Daddy  Jim?" 

James  Andersen  pressed  his  hand.  "It's  nothing," 
he  said  in  rather  a  thick  voice.  "It's  like  everything 
else,  its  nothing.  I  was  a  fool.  I  am  still  a  fool. 
But  its  better  to  be  a  fool  than  to  be  dead,  isn't  it? 
Or  am  I  talking  nonsense?" 

"As  long  as  you're  not  angry  with  me  any  longer," 
answered  Luke  eagerly,  "I  don't  care  how  you  talk!" 

"I  went  to  the  churchyard  —  to  our  old  place  — 
you  know,"  went  on  his  brother.  "I  stayed  nearly 
an  hour  there  —  or  was  it  more?  Perhaps  it  was 
more.  I  stayed  so  long,  anyway,  that  I  nearly  went 
to  sleep.  I  think  I  must  have  gone  to  sleep!"  he 
added,  after  a  moment's  pause. 

"I  expect  you  were  tired,"  remarked  Luke  rather 
weakly,  feeling  for  some  reason  or  other,  a  strange 
sense  of  disquietude. 

"Tired?"  exclaimed  the  recumbent  man,  "why 
should  I  be  tired?"  He  raised  himself  up  with  a  jerk, 
and  finishing  his  glass,  set  it  down  with  meticulous 
care  upon  the  ground  beside  him. 

Luke  noticed,  with  an  uncomfortable  sense  of 
something  not  quite  usual  in  his  manner,  that  every 
movement  he  made  and  every  word  he  spoke  seemed 
the  result  of  a  laborious  and  conscious  effort  —  like 
the  effort  of  one  in  incomplete  control  of  his  sensory 
nerves. 

"What  shall  we  do  now?"  said  Luke  with  an  air 
of  ease  and  indifference.     "Do  you  feel  like  strolling 


HULLAWAY  403 


back  to  Nevilton,  or  shall  we  make  a  day  of  it  and 
go  on  to  Roger-Town  Ferry  and  have  dinner  there?" 

James  gave  vent  to  a  curiously  unpleasant  laugh. 
"You  go,  my  dear,"  he  said,  "and  leave  me  where 
I  am." 

Luke  began  to  feel  thoroughly  uncomfortable.  He 
once  more  laid  his  hand  caressingly  on  his  brother's 
knee.  "You  have  really  forgiven  me?"  he  pleaded. 
"Really  and  truly?" 

James  Andersen  had  again  sunk  back  into  a  semi- 
comatose state  in  his  corner.  "Forgive?"  he  mut- 
tered, as  though  he  found  difficulty  in  understanding 
the  meaning  of  the  word,  "forgive?  I  tell  you  its 
nothing." 

He  was  silent,  and  then,  in  a  still  more  drowsy 
murmur,  he  uttered  the  word  "Nothing"  three  or 
four  times.  Soon  after  this  he  closed  his  eyes  and 
relapsed  into  a  deep  slumber. 

"Better  leave  'un  as  'un  be,"  remarked  the  land- 
lord to  Luke,  "I've  had  my  eye  on  'un  for  this  last 
'arf  hour.  'A  do  seem  mazed-like,  looks  so.  Let  'un 
bide  where  'un  be,  master.  These  be  wonderful 
rumbly  days  for  a  man's  head.  'Taint  what  'ee's 
'ad,  you  understand;  to  my  thinking,  'tis  these  thun- 
der-shocks wot  'ave  worrited  'im." 

Luke  nodded  at  the  man,  and  standing  up  sur- 
veyed his  brother  gravely.  It  certainly  looked  as  if 
James  was  settled  in  his  corner  for  the  rest  of  the 
morning.  Luke  wondered  if  it  would  be  best  to  let 
him  remain  where  he  was,  and  sleep  off  his  coma,  or 
to  rouse  him  and  try  and  persuade  him  to  return 
home.     He  decided  to  take  the  landlord's  advice. 

"Very   well,"   he  said.      "I'll  just  leave  him  for  a 


404  WOOD  AND   STONE 

while  to  recover  himself.  You'll  keep  an  eye  to 
him,  won't  you,  Mr.  Titley?  I'll  just  wander  round  a 
bit,  and  come  back.  May-be  if  he  doesn't  want  to 
go  home  to  dinner,  we'll  have  a  bite  of  something 
here  with  you." 

Mr.  Titley  promised  not  to  let  his  guest  out  of  his 
sight.  "I  know  what  these  thunder-shocks  be,"  he 
said.  "Don't  you  worry,  mister.  You'll  find  'un 
wonderful  reasonable  along  of  an  hour  or  so.  'Tis 
the  weather  wot  'ave  him  floored  'im.  The  liquor 
'ee's  put  down  wouldn't  hurt  a  cat." 

Luke  threw  an  affectionate  glance  at  his  brother's 
reclining  figure  and  went  out.  The  reaction  from  his 
exaggerated  anxiety  left  him  listless  and  unnerved. 
He  walked  slowly  across  the  green,  towards  the  group 
of  elms. 

It  was  now  past  noon  and  the  small  children  who 
had  been  loitering  under  the  trees  had  been  carried 
off  to  their  mid-day  meal.  The  place  seemed  en- 
tirely deserted,  except  for  the  voracious  ducks  in  the 
mud  of  the  Great  Pond.  He  fancied  at  first  that 
Phyllis  Santon  had  disappeared  with  the  children,  and 
a  queer  feeling  of  disappointment  descended  upon 
him.  He  would  have  liked  at  least  to  have  had  the 
opportunity  of  refusing  himself  the  pleasure  of  talk- 
ing to  her!  He  approached  the  enormous  elm  under 
which  stood  the  stocks.  Ah!  She  was  still  there 
then,  his  little  Nevilton  acquaintance.  He  had  not 
seen  her  sooner,  because  she  was  seated  on  the  lowest 
roots  of  the  tree,  her  knees  against  the  stocks  them- 
selves. 

"Hullo,  child!"  he  found  himself  saying,  while  his 
inner  consciousness  told  itself  that  he  would  just  say 


HULLAWAY  405 


me  word  to  her,  so  that  her  feelings  should  not  be 
lurt,  and  then  stroll  off  to  the  churchyard.  "Why, 
ou  have  fixed  yourself  in  the  very  place  where  they 
[sed  to  make  people  sit,  when  they  put  them  in  the 
tocks!" 

"Have  I?"  said  the  girl  looking  up  at  him  without 
aoving.  *"Tis  curious  to  think  of  them  days!  They 
io  say  folks  never  tasted  meat  nor  butter  in  them 
Id  times.     I  guess  it's  better  to  be  living  as  we  be." 

Luke's  habitual  tone  of  sentimental  moralizing  had 
vidently  set  the  fashion  among  the  maids  of  Nevilton. 
irirls  are  incredibly  quick  at  acquiring  the  mental 
tmosphere  of  a  philosopher  who  attracts  them.  The 
imple  flattery  of  her  adoption  of  his  colour  of  thought 
aade  it  still  more  difficult  for  Luke  to  keep  his  vow 
0  the  Spinners  of  Destiny. 

"Yes,"  he  remarked  pensively,  seating  himself  on 
he  stocks  above  her.  "It  is  extraordinary,  isn't  it, 
o  think  how  many  generations  of  people,  like  you 
nd  me,  have  talked  to  one  another  here,  in  fine  days 
nd  cloudy  days,  in  winter  and  summer  —  and  the 
ame  old  pond  and  the  same  old  elms  listening  to 
11  they  say?" 

"Don't  say  that,  Luke  dear,"  protested  the  girl, 
nth.  a  little  apprehensive  movement  of  her  shoulders, 
nd  a  tightened  clasp  of  her  hands  round  her  knees. 
I  don't  like  to  think  of  that!  'Tis  lonesome  enough 
a  this  place,  mid-day,  without  thinking  of  them 
host-stories." 

"Why  do  you  say  ghost-stories?"  inquired  Luke. 
'There's  nothing  ghostly  about  that  dirty  old  pond 
nd  there's  nothing  ghostly  about  these  hollow  trees 
-  not  now,  any  way." 


406  WOOD  AND   STONE 

*"Tis  what  you  said  about  their  listening,  that 
seems  ghostly-like  to  me,"  replied  the  girl.  "I  am 
always  like  that,  you  know.  Sometimes,  down  home, 
I  gets  a  grip  of  the  terrors  from  staring  at  old  Mr. 
Pratty's  barn.  'Tis  funny,  isn't  it.f*  I  suppose  I  was 
born  along  of  Christmas.  They  say  children  born 
then  are   wonderful   ones   for  fancying  things." 

Luke  prodded  the  ground  with  his  cane  and  looked 
at  her  in  silence.  Conscious  of  a  certain  admira- 
tion in  his  look,  for  the  awkwardness  of  her  pose 
only  enhanced  the  magnetic  charm  of  her  person, 
she  proceeded  to  remove  her  hat  and  lean  her  head 
with  a  wistful  abandonment  against  the  rough  bark 
of  the  tree. 

The  clouds  hung  heavily  over  them,  and  it  seemed 
that  at  any  moment  the  rain  might  descend  in 
torrents;  but  so  far  not  a  drop  had  fallen.  Queer 
and  mysterious  emotions  passed  through  Luke's 
mind. 

He  felt  in  some  odd  way  that  he  was  at  a  turning- 
point  in  the  tide  of  his  existence.  It  almost  seemed 
to  him  as  though,  silent  and  unmoving,  under  the 
roof  of  the  little  inn  which  he  could  see  from  where 
he  sat,  his  brother  was  lying  in  the  crisis  of  some 
dangerous  fever.  A  movement,  or  gesture,  or  word, 
from  himself  might  precipitate  this  crisis,  in  one 
direction  or  the  other. 

The  girl  crouched  at  his  feet  became  to  him,  as  he 
gazed  at  her,  something  more  than  a  mere  amorous 
acquaintance.  She  became  a  type,  a  symbol  —  an 
incarnation  of  the  formidable  writing  of  that  Mov- 
ing Finger,  to  which  all  flesh  must  bow.  Her  half- 
coquettish,     half-serious     apprehensions,     about     the 


HULLAWAY  407 


ghostliness  of  the  things  that  are  always  listening, 
as  the  human  drama  works  itself  out  in  their  dumb 
presence,  affected  him  in  spite  of  himself.  The  vil- 
lage of  HuUaway  seemed  at  that  moment  to  have 
disappeared  into  space,  and  he  and  his  companion 
to  be  isolated  and  suspended — remote  from  all  ter- 
restial  activities,  and  yet  aware  of  some  confused 
struggle  between  invisible  antagonists. 

From  the  splashing  ducks  in  the  pond  who,  every 
now  then,  so  ridiculously  turned  up  their  squat 
tails  to  the  cloudy  heavens,  his  eye  wandered  to  the 
impenetrable  expectancy  of  the  stone  path  which 
bordered  the  muddy  edge  of  the  water.  With  the 
quick  sense  of  one  whose  daily  occupation  was  con- 
cerned with  this  particular  stone,  he  began  calculating 
how  long  that  time-worn  pavement  had  remained 
there,  and  how  many  generations  of  human  feet, 
hurrying  or  loitering,  had  passed  along  it  since  it 
was  first  laid  down.  What  actual  men,  he  won- 
dered, had  brought  it  there,  from  its  resting-place, 
aeons-old  in  the  distant  hill,  and  laid  it  where  it 
now  lay,  slab  by  slab? 

From  where  he  sat  he  could  just  observe,  between 
a  gap  in  the  trees  of  the  Manor-Farm  garden,  the 
extreme  edge  of  that  Leonian  promontory.  It  seemed 
to  him  as  though  the  hill  were  at  that  moment  being 
swept  by  a  storm  of  rain.  He  shivered  a  little  at 
the  idea  of  how  such  a  sweeping  storm,  borne  on  a 
northern  wind,  would  invade  those  bare  trenches 
and  unprotected  escarpments.  He  felt  glad  that 
his  brother  had  selected  Hullaway  rather  than  that 
particular  spot  for  his  angry  retreat. 

With  a  sense  of  relief  he  turned  his  eyes  once  more 


408  WOOD  AND   STONE 

to  the  girl  reclining  below  him  in  such  a  charming 
attitude. 

How  absurd  it  was,  he  thought,  to  let  these 
vague  superstitions  overmaster  him!  Surely  it  was 
really  an  indication  of  cowardice,  in  the  presence  of 
a  hypothetical  Fate,  to  make  such  fantastic  vows 
as  that  which  he  had  recently  made.  It  was  all 
part  of  the  atavistic  survival  in  him  of  that  un- 
happy "conscience,"  which  had  done  so  much  to 
darken  the  history  of  the  tribes  of  men.  It  was 
like  "touching  wood"  in  honour  of  infernal  deities! 
What  was  the  use  of  being  a  philosopher  —  of  being 
so  deeply  conscious  of  the  illusive  and  subjective 
nature  of  all  these  scruples  —  if,  at  a  crisis,  one  only 
fell  back  into  such  absurd  morbidity?  The  vow  he 
had  registered  in  his  mind  an  hour  before,  seemed  to 
him  now  a  piece  of  grotesque  irrelevance  —  a  lapse, 
a  concession  to  weakness,  a  reversion  to  primitive 
inhibition.  If  it  had  been  cowardice  to  make  such 
a  vow,  it  were  a  still  greater  cowardice  to  keep  it. 

He  rose  from  his  seat  on  the  stocks,  and  began  idly 
lifting  up  and  down  the  heavy  wooden  bar  which 
surmounted  this  queer ,  old  pillory.  He  finally  left 
the  thing  open  and  gaping;  its  semi-circular  cavities 
ready  for  any  offender.  Moved  by  a  sudden  im- 
pulse, the  girl  leant  back  still  further  against  the 
tree,  and  whimsically  raising  one  of  her  little  feet, 
inserted  it  into  the  aperture.  Amused  at  her  com- 
panion's interest  in  this  levity,  and  actuated  by  a 
profound  girlish  instinct  to  ruffle  the  situation  by 
some  startling  caprice,  she  had  no  sooner  got  one 
ankle  into  the  cavity  thus  prepared  for  it,  than 
with   a   sudden   effort    she    placed   the   other    by   its 


HULLAWAY  409 


side,    and    coyly    straightening    her    skirts    with    her 
hands,  looked  up  smiling  into  Luke's  face. 

Thus  challenged,  as  it  were,  by  this  wilful  little 
would-be  malefactor,  Luke  was  mechanically  com- 
pelled to  complete  her  imprisonment.  With  a  sud- 
den vicious  snap  he  let  down  the  enclosing  bar. 

She  was  now  completely  powerless;  for  the  most 
drastic  laws  of  balance  made  it  quite  impossible  that 
she  could  release  herself.  It  thus  became  inevitable 
that  he  should  slip  down  on  the  ground  by  her  side, 
and  begin  teasing  her,  indulging  himself  in  sundry 
innocent  caresses  which  her  helpless  position  made 
it  difficult  to  resist. 

It  was  not  long,  however,  before  Phyllis,  fearful 
of  the  appearance  upon  the  scene  of  some  of  Hull- 
away's  inhabitants,  implored  him  to  release  her. 

Luke  rose  and  with  his  hand  upon  the  bar  con- 
templated smilingly  his  fair  prisoner. 

"Please  be  quick!"  the  girl  cried  impatiently. 
"I'm  getting  so  stiff." 

"Shall  I,  or  shan't  1?"  said  Luke  provokingly. 

The  corner  of  the  girl's  mouth  fell  and  her  under- 
lip  quivered.  It  only  needed  a  moment's  further 
delay  to  reduce  her  to  tears. 

At  that  moment  two  interruptions  occurred  simul- 
taneously. From  the  door  of  the  King's  Arms 
emerged  the  landlord,  and  began  making  vehement 
signals  to  Luke;  while  from  the  corner  of  the  road 
to  Nevilton  appeared  the  figures  of  two  young  ladies, 
walking  briskly  towards  them,  absorbed  in  earnest 
conversation.  These  simultaneous  events  were  ob- 
served in  varying  ratio  by  the  captive  and  her  cap- 
tor.    Luke  was  vaguely  conscious  of  the  two  ladies 


410  WOOD  AND   STONE 

and  profoundly  agitated  by  the  appearance  of  the 
landlord.  Phyllis  was  vaguely  conscious  of  the  land- 
lord and  was  profoundly  agitated  by  the  appearance 
of  the  ladies.  The  young  stone-carver  gave  a  quick 
thoughtless  jerk  to  the  bar;  and  without  waiting  to 
see  the  result,  rushed  off  towards  the  inn.  The 
heavy  block  of  wood,  impelled  by  the  impetus  he 
had  given  it,  swung  upwards,  until  it  almost  reached 
the  perpendicular.  Then  it  descended  with  a  crash. 
The  girl  had  just  time  to  withdraw  one  of  her  ankles. 
The  other  was  imprisoned  as  hopeless  as  before. 

Phyllis  was  overwhelmed  with  shame  and  embar- 
rassment. She  had  in  a  moment  recognized  Gladys, 
and  she  felt  as  those  Apocalyptic  unfortunates  in 
Holy  Scripture  are  reported  as  feeling  when  they 
call  upon  the  hills  to  cover  them. 

It  had  happened  that  Ralph  Dangelis  had  been 
compelled  to  pay  a  flying  visit  to  London  on  business 
connected  with  his  proposed  marriage.  The  two 
cousins,  preoccupied,  each  of  them,  with  their  sep- 
arate anxieties,  had  wandered  thus  far  from  home 
to  escape  the  teasing  fussiness  of  Mrs.  Romer,  who 
with  her  preparations  for  the  double  wedding  gave 
neither  of  them  any  peace. 

They  approached  quite  near  to  the  group  of  elms 
before  either  of  them  observed  the  unfortunate 
Phyllis. 

"Why!"  cried  Gladys  suddenly  to  her  compan- 
ion.    "There's  somebody  in  the  stocks!" 

She  went  forward  hastily,  followed  at  a  slower 
pace  by  the  Italian.  Poor  Phyllis,  her  bundle  by 
her  side,  and  her  cheeks  tear-stained,  presented  a 
woeful  enough  appearance.     Her  first  inclination  was 


HULL  A  WAY  411 


to  hide  her  face  in  her  hands;  but  making  a  brave 
effort,  she  turned  her  head  towards  the  new-comers 
with  a  gasping  little  laugh. 

"I  put  my  foot  in  here  for  a  joke,"  she  stammered, 
"and  it  got  caught.      Please  let  me  out.  Miss  Romer." 

Gladys  came  quite  near  and  laid  her  gloved  hand 
upon  the  wooden  bar. 

"It  just  lifts  up.  Miss,"  pleaded  Phyllis,  with 
tears  in  her  voice.     "It  isn't  at  all  heavy." 

Gladys  stared  at  her  with  a  growing  sense  of  in- 
terest. The  girl's  embarrassment  under  her  scru- 
tiny awoke  her  Romer  malice. 

"I  really  don't  know  that  I  want  to  let  you  out 
in  such  a  hurry,"  she  said.  "If  it's  a  game  you  are 
playing,  it  would  be  a  pity  to  spoil  it.  Who  put  you 
in.f^  You  must  tell  me  that,  before  I  set  you  free! 
You  couldn't  have  done  it  yourself." 

By  this  time  Lacrima  had  arrived  on  the  scene. 

The  shame-faced  Phyllis  turned  to  her.  "Please, 
Miss  Traffio,  please,  lift  that  thing  up!  It's  quite 
easy  to  move." 

The  Italian  at  once  laid  her  hands  upon  the  block 
of  wood  and  struggled  to  raise  it;  but  Gladys  had 
no  difficulty  in  keeping  the  bar  immoveable. 

"What  are  you  doing?"  cried  the  younger  girl 
indignantly.     "Take   your   arm   away!" 

"She  must  tell  us  first  who  put  her  where  she  is," 
reiterated  Miss  Romer.  "I  won't  have  her  let  out 
'till  she  tells  us  that!" 

Phyllis  looked  piteously  from  one  to  the  other. 
Then  she  grew  desperate. 

"It  was  Luke  Andersen,"  she  whispered. 

"What!"   cried   Gladys.     "Luke?     Then  he's  been 


412  WOOD  AND  STONE 

out    walking    with    you?     Has    he?      Has    he?      Has 
he?" 

She  repeated  these  words  with  such  concentrated 
fury  that  Phyllis  began  to  cry.  But  the  shock  of  this 
information  gave  Lacrima  her  chance.  Using  all  her 
strength  she  lifted  the  heavy  bar  and  released  the 
prisoner.  Phyllis  staggered  to  her  feet  and  picked 
up  her  bundle.  Lacrima  handed  the  girl  her  hat 
and  helped  her  to  brush  the  dust  from  her  clothes. 

"So  you  are  Luke's  latest  fancy  are  you?" 
Gladys  said  scowling  fiercely  at  the  glove-maker. 

The  pent-up  feelings  of  the  young  woman  broke 
forth  at  once.  Moving  a  step  or  two  away  from 
them  and  glancing  at  a  group  of  farm-men  who  were 
crossing  the  green,  she  gave  full  scope  to  her  revenge. 

"I'm  only  Annie  Bristow's  friend,"  she  retorted. 
"Annie  Bristow  is  going  to  marry  Luke.  They  are 
right  down  mad  on  one  another." 

"It's  a  lie!"  cried  Gladys,  completely  forgetting 
herself  and  looking  as  if  she  could  have  struck  the 
mocking  villager. 

"A  lie,  eh?"  returned  the  other.  "Tisn't  for  me 
to  tell  the  tale  to  a  young  lady,  the  likes  of  you. 
But  we  be  all  guessing  down  in  Mr.  North's  factory, 
who  'twas  that  gave  Luke  the  pretty  lady-like  ring 
wot  he  lent  to  Annie!" 

Gladys  became  livid  with  anger.  "What  ring?" 
she  cried.     "Why  are  you  talking  about  a  ring?" 

"Annie,  she  stuck  it,  for  devilry,  into  that  hole  in 
Splash-Lane  stone.  She  pushed  it  in,  tight  as  'twere 
a  sham  diamint.  And  there  it  do  bide,  the  lady's 
pretty  ring,  all  glittery  and  shiny,  at  bottom  of  that 
there   hole!     We   maids   do   go   to   see   'un   glinsying 


HULLAWAY  413 


and  gleaming.  It  be  the  talk  of  the  place,  that  ring 
be!  Scarce  one  of  the  childer  but  'as  'ad  its  try  to 
hook  'un  out.  But  'tis  no  good.  I  guess  Annie 
must  have  rammed  it  down  with  her  mother's  girt 
skewer.  'Tis  fast  in  that  stone  anyway,  for  all  the 
world  to  see.  Folks,  maybe,  '11  be  coming  from 
Yeoborough,  long  as  a  few  days  be  over,  to  see  the 
lady's  ring,  wot  Annie  threw'd  away,  'afore  she  said 
'yes'  to  her  young  man!" 

These  final  words  were  positively  shouted  by  the 
enraged  Phyllis,  as  she  tripped  away,  swinging  her 
bundle  triumphantly. 

It  seemed  for  a  moment  as  though  Gladys  medi- 
tated a  desperate  pursuit,  and  the  infliction  of  phys- 
ical violence  upon  her  enemy.  But  Lacrima  held 
her  fast  by  the  hand.  "For  heaven's  sake,  cousin," 
she  whispered,  "let  her  go.  Look  at  those  men 
watching  us!" 

Gladys  turned;  but  it  was  not  at  the  farm-men 
she  looked. 

Across  the  green  towards  them  came  the  two 
Andersens,  Luke  looking  nervous  and  worried,  and 
his  brother  gesticulating  strangely.  The  girls  re- 
mained motionless,  neither  advancing  to  meet  them 
nor  making  any  attempt  to  evade  them.  Gladys 
seemed  to  lose  her  defiant  air,  and  waited  their 
approach,  rather  with  the  look  of  one  expecting  to 
be  chidden  than  of  one  prepared  to  chide.  On  all 
recent  occasions  this  had  been  her  manner,  when  in 
the  presence  of  the  young  stone-carver. 

The  sight  of  Lacrima  seemed  to  exercise  a  magical 
effect  upon  James  Andersen.  He  ceased  at  once  his 
excited    talk,    and    advancing    towards    her,    greeted 


414  WOOD  AND   STONE 

her  in  his  normal  tone  —  a  tone  of  almost  paternal 
gentleness. 

"It  is  nearly  a  quarter  to  one,"  said  Gladys, 
addressing  both  the  men.  "Lacrima  and  I'll  have 
all  we  can  do  to  get  back  in  time  for  lunch.  Let's 
walk  back  together!" 

Luke  looked  at  his  brother  who  gave  him  a  friendly 
smile.  He  also  looked  sharply  at  the  Hullaway  la- 
bourers, who  were  shuflfling  off  towards  the  barton  of 
the  Manor-Farm. 

"I  don't  mind,"  he  said;  "though  it  is  a  danger- 
ous time  of  day!  But  we  can  go  by  the  fields,  and 
you  can  leave  us  at  Roandyke  Barn." 

They  moved  off  along  the  edge  of  the  pond  to- 
gether. 

"It  was  Lacrima,  not  I,  Luke,"  said  Gladys  pres- 
ently, "who  let  that  girl  out." 

Luke  flicked  a  clump  of  dock-weeds  with  his  cane. 
"It  was  her  own  fault,"  he  said  carelessly.  "I 
thought  I'd  opened  the  thing.  I  was  called  away 
suddenly." 

Gladys  bowed  her  head  submissively.  In  the 
company  of  the  young  stone-carver  her  whole  nature 
seemed  to  change.  A  shrewd  observer  might  even 
have  marked  a  subtle  difference  in  her  physical 
appearance.  She  appeared  to  wilt  and  droop,  like 
a  tropical  flower  transplanted  into  a  northern 
zone. 

They  remained  all  together  until  they  reached  the 
fields.     Then  Gladys  and  Luke  dropped  behind. 

"I  have  something  I  want  to  tell  you,"  said  the 
fair  girl,  as  soon  as  the  others  were  out  of  hearing. 
"Something  very  important." 


HULLAWAY  415 


"I  have  something  to  tell  you  too,"  answered 
Luke,  "and  I  think  I  will  tell  it  first.  It  is  hardly 
likely  that  your  piece  of  news  can  be  as  serious  as 
mine." 

They  paused  at  a  stile;  and  the  girl  made  him  take 
her  in  his  arms  and  kiss  her,  before  she  consented  to 
hear  what  he  had  to  say. 

It  would  have  been  noticeable  to  any  observer  that 
in  the  caresses  they  exchanged,  Luke  played  the  per- 
functory, and  she  the  passionate  part.  She  kissed 
him  thirstily,  insatiably,  with  clinging  lips  that 
seemed  avid  of  his  very  soul.  When  at  last  they 
moved  on  through  grass  that  was  still  wet  with  the 
rain  of  the  night  before,  Luke  drew  his  hand  away 
from  hers,  as  if  to  emphasize  the  seriousness  of  his 
words. 

"I  am  terribly  anxious,  dearest,  about  James," 
he  said.  "We  had  an  absurd  quarrel  this  morning, 
and  he  rushed  off  to  Hullaway  in  a  rage.  I  found 
him  in  the  inn.  He  had  been  drinking,  but  it  was 
not  that  which  upset  him.  He  had  not  taken  enough 
to  affect  him  in  that  way.  I  am  very,  very  anxious 
about  him.  I  forget  whether  I've  ever  told  you 
about  my  mother  .f*  Her  mind  —  poor  darling  —  was 
horribly  upset  before  she  died.  She  suffered  from 
more  than  one  distressing  mania.  And  my  fear  is 
that  James  may  go  the  same  way.' 

Gladys  hung  her  head.  In  a  strange  and  subtle 
way  she  felt  as  though  the  responsibility  of  this  new 
catastrophe  rested  upon  her.  Her  desperate  passion 
for  Luke  had  so  unnerved  her,  that  she  had  become 
liable  to  be  victimized  by  any  sort  of  superstitious 
apprehension. 


416  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"How  dreadful!"  she  whispered,  "but  he  seemed  to 
me  perfectly  natural  just  now." 

"That  was  Lacrima's  doing,"  said  Luke.  "Lac- 
rima  is  at  the  bottom  of  it  all.  I  wish,  oh,  I  wish, 
she  was  going  to  marry  James,  instead  of  that  uncle 
of  yours." 

"Father  would  never  allow  that,"  said  Gladys, 
raising  her  head.  "He  is  set  upon  making  her  take 
uncle  John.  It  has  become  a  kind  of  passion  with 
him.     Father  is  funny  in  these  things." 

"Still  —  it  might  be  managed,"  muttered  Luke 
thoughtfully,  "if  we  carried  it  through  with  a  high 
hand.  We  might  arrange  it;  the  world  is  malleable, 
after  all.  If  you  and  I,  my  dear,  put  our  heads 
together,  Mr,  John  Goring  might  whistle  for  his 
bride." 

"I  hate  Lacrimal"  cried  Gladys,  with  a  sudden 
access  of  her  normal  spirit. 

"I  don't  care  two  pence  about  Lacrima,"  returned 
Luke.     "It  is  of  James  I  am  thinking." 

"But  she  would  be  happy  with  James,  and  I  don't 
want  her  to  be  happy." 

"What  a  little  devil  you  are!"  exclaimed  the  stone- 
carver,  slipping  his  arm  round  her  waist. 

"Yes,  I  know  I  am,"  she  answered  shamelessly. 
"I  suppose  I  inherit  it  from  father.  He  hates  people 
just  like  that.  But  I  am  not  a  devil  with  you, 
Luke,  am  I.''  I  wish  I  were!"  she  added,  after  a  little 
pause. 

"We  must  think  over  this  business  from  every 
point  of  view,"  said  Luke  solemnly.  "I  cannot 
help  thinking  that  if  you  and  I  resolve  to  do  it,  we 
can   twist   the   fates   round,    somehow   or   another.     I 


HULLAWAY  417 


am  sure  Lacrima  could  save  James  if  she  liked.  If 
you  could  only  have  seen  the  difference  between 
what  he  was  when  I  was  called  back  to  him  just  now, 
and  what  he  became  as  soon  as  he  set  eyes  upon 
her,  you  would  know  what  I  mean.  He  is  mad 
about  her,  and  if  he  doesn't  get  her,  he'll  go  really 
mad.  He  was  a  madman  just  now.  He  nearly 
frightened  that  fool  Titley  into  a  fit." 

"I  don't  ivant  Lacrima  to  marry  James,"  burst 
out  Gladys.  Luke  in  a  moment  drew  his  arm  away, 
and  quickened  his  pace. 

"As  you  please,"  he  said.  "But  I  can  promise 
you  this,  my  friend,  that  if  anything  does  happen  to 
my  brother,  it'll  be  the  end  of  everything  between 
us." 

"Why  —  what  —  how  can  you  say  such  dreadful 
things?"  stammered  the  girl. 

Luke  airily  swung  his  stick.  "It  all  rests  with 
you,  child.  Though  we  can't  marry,  there's  no 
reason  why  we  shouldn't  go  on  seeing  each  other, 
as  we  do  now,  forever  and  ever,  —  as  long  as  you 
help  me  in  this  affair.  But  if  you're  going  to  sulk 
and  talk  this  nonsense  about  'hating'  —  it  is  prob- 
able that  it  will  be  a  case  of  good-bye!" 

The  fair  girl's  face  was  distorted  by  a  spasmodic 
convulsion  of  conflicting  emotions.  She  bit  her  lip 
and  hung  her  head.  Presently  she  looked  up  again 
and  flung  her  arms  round  his  neck.  "I'll  do  any- 
thing you  ask  me,  Luke,  anything,  as  long  as  you 
don't  turn  against  me." 

They  walked  along  for  some  time  in  silence,  hand 
in  hand,  taking  care  not  to  lose  sight  of  their  two 
companions    who  seemed  as  engrossed  as  themselves 


418  WOOD  AND   STONE 

in  one  another's  society.  James  Andersen  was  show- 
ing sufficient  discretion  in  avoiding  the  more  fre- 
quented foot-paths. 

"Luke",  began  the  girl  at  last,  "did  you  really 
give  my  ring  to  Annie  Santon?" 

"Luke's  brow  clouded  in  a  moment.  "Damn 
your  ring!"  he  cried  harshly.  "I've  got  other  things 
to  think  about  now  than  your  confounded  rings. 
When  people  give  me  presents  of  that  kind,"  he  added 
"I  take  for  granted  I  can  do  what  I  like  with 
them." 

Gladys  trembled  and  looked  pitfully  into  his  face. 

"But  that  girl  said,"  she  murmured  —  "that  fac- 
tory girl,  I  mean — that  it  had  been  lost  in  some  way; 
hidden,  she  said,  in  some  hole  in  a  stone.  I  can't 
believe  that  you  would  let  me  be  made  a  laughing- 
stock of,  Luke  dear?" 

"Oh,  don't  worry  me  about  that,"  replied  the 
stone-carver.  "Maybe  it  is  so,  maybe  it  isn't  so; 
anyway  it  doesn't  matter  a  hang." 

"She  said  too,"  pleaded  Gladys  in  a  hesitating 
voice,  "that  you  and  Annie  were  going  to  be  mar- 
ried." 

"Ho!  ho!"  laughed  Luke,  fumbling  with  some 
tightly  tied  hurdles  that  barred  their  way;  "so  she 
said  that,  did  she?  She  must  have  had  her  knife 
into  you,  our  little  Phyllis.  Well,  and  what's  to 
stop  me  if  I  did  decide  to  marry  Annie?" 

Gladys  gasped  and  looked  at  him  with  a  drawn 
and  haggard  face.  Her  beauty  was  of  the  kind  that 
required  the  flush  of  buoyant  spirits  to  illuminate  it. 
The  more  her  heart  ached,  the  less  attractive  she 
became.     She  was  anything  but  beautiful  now;  and, 


HULLAWAY  419 


as  he  looked  at  her,  Luke  noticed  for  the  first  time, 
how  low  her  hair  grew  upon  her  forehead. 

"You  wouldn't  think  of  doing  that?"  she  whis- 
pered, in  a  tone  of  supplication.  He  laughed  lightly 
and  lifting  up  her  chin  made  as  though  he  were 
going  to  kiss  her,  but  drew  back  without  doing  so. 

"Are  you  going  to  be  good,"  he  said,  "and  help 
me  to  get  Lacrima  for  James?" 

She  threw  her  arms  round  him.  "I'll  do  anything 
you  like  —  anything,"  she  repeated,  "if  you'll  only 
let  me  love  you!" 

While  this  conversation  was  proceeding  between 
these  two,  a  not  less  interesting  clash  of  divergent 
emotions  was  occurring  between  their  friends.  The 
Italian  may  easily  be  pardoned  if  she  never  for  one 
second  dreamed  of  the  agitation  in  her  companion's 
mind  that  had  so  frightened  Luke.  James'  manner 
was  in  no  way  different  from  usual,  and  though  he 
expressed  his  feelings  in  a  more  unreserved  fashion 
than  he  had  ever  done  before,  Lacrima  had  been  for 
many  weeks  expecting  some  such  outbreak. 

"Don't  be  angry  with  me,"  he  was  saying,  as  he 
strode  by  her  side.  "I  had  meant  never  to  have 
told  you  of  this.  I  had  meant  to  let  it  die  with  me, 
without  your  ever  knowing,  but  somehow  —  today — I 
could  not  help  it." 

He  had  confessed  to  her  point  blank,  and  in  simple, 
unbroken  words,  the  secret  of  his  heart,  and  La- 
crima had  for  some  moments  walked  along  with  head 
averted  making  no  response. 

It  would  not  be  true  to  say  that  this  revelation 
surprised  her.  It  would  be  completely  untrue  to  say 
it  ofiFended  her.     It  did  not  even  enter  her  mind  that 


420  WOOD  AND   STONE 

it  might  have  been  kinder  to  have  been  less  friendly, 
less  responsive,  than  she  had  been,  to  this  queer 
taciturn  admirer.  But  circumstances  had  really- 
given  her  very  little  choice  in  the  matter.  She  had 
been,  as  it  were,  flung  perforce  upon  his  society,  and 
she  had  accepted,  as  a  providential  qualification  of 
her  loneliness,  the  fact  that  he  was  attracted  towards 
her  rather  than  repelled  by  her. 

It  is  quite  possible  that  had  he  remained  untouched 
by  the  evasive  appeal  of  her  timid  grace;  had  he, 
for  instance,  remained  a  provocative  and  impene- 
trable mystery  at  her  side,  she  might  have  been  led 
to  share  his  feelings.  But,  unluckily  for  poor  Ander- 
sen, the  very  fact  that  his  feelings  had  been  dis- 
closed only  too  clearly,  militated  hopelessly  against 
such  an  event.  He  was  no  remote,  shadowy,  roman- 
tic possibility  to  her  —  a  closed  casket  of  wonders, 
difficult  and  dangerous  to  open.  He  was  simply  a 
passionate  and  assiduous  lover.  The  fact  that  he 
could  love  her,  lowered  him  a  little  in  Lacrima's 
esteem.  True  to  her  Pariah  instincts  she  felt  that 
such  passion  was  a  sign  of  weakness  in  him;  and  if  she 
did  not  actually  despise  him  for  it,  it  materially  lessened 
the  interest  she  took  in  the  workings  of  his  mind. 
Maurice  Quincunx  drew  her  to  him  for  the  very  reason 
that  he  was  so  sexless,  so  cold,  so  wayward,  so  full  of 
whimsical  caprices.  Maurice,  a  Pariah  himself,  excited 
at  the  same  time  her  maternal  tenderness  and  her 
imaginative  affection.  If  she  did  not  feel  the  passion 
for  him  that  she  might  have  felt  for  Andersen,  had 
Andersen  remained  inacessible;  that  was  only  because 
there  was  something  in  Maurice's  peculiar  egoism 
which  chilled  such  feelings  at  their  root. 


HULLAWAY  421 


Another  almost  equally  effective  cause  of  her  lack 
of  response  to  the  stone-carver's  emotion  was  the 
cynical  and  world-deep  weariness  that  had  fallen  upon 
her,  since  this  dreadful  marriage  with  Goring  had  be- 
come a  settled  event.  Face  to  face  with  this,  she 
felt  as  though  nothing  mattered  very  much,  and  as 
though  any  feeling  she  herself  might  excite  in  another 
person  must  needs  be  like  the  passing  of  a  shadow 
across  a  mirror  —  something  vague,  unreal,  insub- 
stantial —  something  removed  to  a  remote  distance, 
like  the  voice  of  a  person  at  the  end  of  a  long 
tunnel,  or  as  the  dream  of  someone  who  is  himself  a 
figure  in  a  dream.  If  anyone,  she  felt,  broke  into 
the  enchanted  circle  that  surrounded  her,  it  was  as  if 
they  sought  to  make  overtures  to  a  person  dead  and 
buried. 

It  was  almost  with  the  coldness  and  detachment  of 
the  dead  that  she  now  answered  him,  and  her  voice 
went  sighing  across  the  wet  fields  with  a  desolation 
that  would  have  struck  a  more  normal  mind  than 
Andersen's  as  the  incarnation  of  tragedy.  He  was 
himself,  however,  strung  up  to  such  a  tragic  note, 
that  the  despair  in  her  tone  affected  him  less  than  it 
would  have  affected  another. 

"I  have  come  to  feel,"  said  she,  "that  I  have  no 
heart,  and  I  feel  as  though  this  country  of  yours 
had  no  heart.  It  ought  to  be  always  cloudy  and  dark 
in  this  place.  Sunshine  here  is  a  kind  of  bitter 
mockery." 

"You  do  not  know — you  do  not  know  what  you 
say,"  cried  the  poor  stone-carver,  quickening  his 
pace  in  his  excitement  so  that  it  became  difficult  for 
her  to  keep  up  with  him.     "I  have  loved  you,  since  I 


422  AYOOD   AND   STONE 

first  saw  you — that  day — down  at  our  works — when 
the  hawthorn  was  out.  My  heart  at  any  rate  is 
deep  enough,  deep  enough  to  be  hurt  more  than  you 
would  believe,  Lacrima.  Oh,  if  things  were  only 
different!  If  you  could  only  bring  yourself  to  care 
for  me  a  little — just  a  little!     Lacrima,  listen  to  me." 

He  stopped  abruptly  in  the  middle  of  afield  and  made 
her  turn  and  face  him.  He  laid  his  hand  solemnly 
and  imploringly  upon  her  wrist.  "Why  need  you 
put  yourself  under  this  frightful  yoke?  I  know 
something  of  what  you  have  had  to  go  through.  I 
know  something,  though  it  may  be  only  a  little,  of 
what  this  horrible  marriage  means  to  you.  Lacrima, 
for  your  own  sake — as  well  as  mine — for  the  sake  of 
everyone  who  has  ever  cared  for  you — don't  let  them 
drag  you  into  this  atrocious  trap. 

"Trust  me,  give  yourself  boldly  into  my  care. 
Let's  go  away  together  and  try  our  fortune  in  some 
new  place!  All  places  are  not  like  Nevilton.  I  am  a 
strong  man,  I  know  my  trade,  I  could  earn  money 
easily  to  keep  us  both.  Lacrima,  don't  turn  away, 
don't  look  so  helpless!  After  all,  things  might  be 
worse,  you  might  be  already  married  to  that  man, 
and  be  buried  alive  forever!  It  is  not  yet  too  late. 
You  are  still  free.  I  beg  and  implore  you,  by  every- 
thing you  hold  sacred,  to  stop  and  escape  before  it  is 
too  late.  It  doesn't  matter  that  you  don't  love  me 
now.  As  long  as  you  don't  utterly  hate  me  all  can 
be  put  right.  I  don't  ask  you  to  return  what  I  feel 
for  you.  I  won't  ask  it  if  you  agree  to  marry  me. 
I'll  make  any  contract  with  you  you  please,  and 
swear  any  vow.  I  won't  come  near  you  when  we  are 
together.     We    can    live    under   one    roof    as    brother 


HULLAWAY  423 


and  sister.  The  wedding-ring  will  be  nothing  be- 
tween us.  It  will  only  protect  you  from  the  rest  of 
the  world.  I  won't  interfere  with  your  life  at  all, 
when  once  I  have  freed  you  from  this  devil's  hole. 
It  will  only  be  a  marriage  in  form,  in  name;  every- 
thing else  will  be  just  as  you  please.  I  will  obey 
your  least  wish,  your  least  fancy.  If  you  want  to 
go  back  to  your  own  country  and  to  go  alone,  I  will 
save  up  money  enough  to  make  that  possible.  In 
fact,  I  have  now  got  money  enough  to  pay  your 
journey  and  I  would  send  out  more  to  you.  Lacrima, 
let  me  help  you  to  break  away  from  all  this.  You 
must,  Lacrima,  you  must  and  you  shall!  If  you 
prefer  it,  we  needn't  ever  be  married.  I  don't  want 
to  take  advantage  of  you.  I'll  give  you  every 
penny  I  have  and  help  you  out  of  the  country  and 
then  send  you  more  as  I  earn  it.  It  is  madness, 
this  devilish  marriage  they  are  driving  you  into.  It 
is  madness  and  folly  to  submit  to  it.  It  is  monstrous. 
It  is  ridiculous.  You  are  free  to  go,  they  have  no 
hold  upon  you.  Lacrima,  Lacrima!  why  are  you  so 
cruel  to  yourself,  to  me,  to  everyone  who  cares  for 

you?" 

He  drew  breath  at  last,  but  continued  to  clutch 
her  wrist  with  a  trembling  hand,  glancing  anxiously, 
as  he  waited,  at  the  lessening  distance  that  separated 
them  from  the  others. 

Lacrima  looked  at  him  with  a  pale  troubled  face, 
but  her  large  eyes  were  full  of  tears  and  when  she 
spoke  her  voice  quivered. 

"I  was  wrong,  my  friend,  to  say  that  none  of  you 
here  had  any  heart.  Your  heart  is  large  and  noble. 
I  shall  never — never  forget  what  you  have  now  said 


424  WOOD   AND   STONE 

to  me.  But  James — but  James,  dear,"  and  her  voice 
shook  still  more,  "I  cannot,  I  cannot  do  it.  There 
are  more  reasons  than  I  can  explain  to  you,  why 
this  thing  must  happen.  It  has  to  happen,  and  we 
must  bow  our  heads  and  submit.  After  all,  life  is 
not  very  long,  or  very  happy,  at  the  best.  Probably," 
—  and  she  smiled  a  sad  little  smile,  —  "I  should  disap- 
point you  frightfully  if  we  did  go  together.  I  am 
not  such  a  nice  person  as  you  suppose.  I  have  queer 
moods  —  oh,  such  strange,  strange  moods!  —  and  I  know 
for  certain  that  I  should  not  make  you  happy. 

"Shall  I  tell  you  a  horrible  secret,  James?"  Here 
her  voice  sank  into  a  curious  whisper  and  she  laughed 
a  low  distressing  laugh.  "I  have  really  got  the  soul, 
the  soul  I  say,  not  the  nerves  or  sense,  of  a  girl  who 
has  lost  everything,  • —  I  wish  I  could  make  you  under- 
stand —  who  has  lost  self-respect  and  everything,  — 
I  have  thought  myself  into  this  state.  I  don't  care 
now  —  I  really  don't  —  what  happens  to  me.  James, 
dear — you  wouldn't  want  to  marry  a  person  like  that, 
a  person  who  feels  herself  already  dead  and  buried? 
Yes,  and  worse  than  dead!  A  person  who  has  lost 
all  pity,  all  feeling,  even  for  herself.  A  person  who 
is  past  even  caring  for  the  difference  between  right 
and  wrong!  You  wouldn't  want  to  be  kind  to  a 
person  like  that,  James,  would  you?" 

She  stopped  and  gazed  into  his  face,  smiling  a  woe- 
ful little  smile.  Andersen  mechanically  noticed  that 
their  companions  had  observed  their  long  pause,  and 
had  delayed  to  advance,  resting  beneath  the  shelter 
of  a  wind-tossed  ash-tree.  The  stone-carver  began 
to  realize  the  extraordinary  and  terrible  loneliness 
of   every    human    soul.     Here    he    was,    face    to   face 


HULLAWAY  425 


with  the  one  being  of  all  beings  whose  least  look  or 
word  thrilled  him  with  intolerable  excitement,  and 
yet  he  could  not  as  much  as  touch  the  outer  margin 
of  her  real  consciousness. 

He  had  not  the  least  idea,  even  at  that  fatal  mo- 
ment, what  her  inner  spirit  was  feeling;  what  thoughts, 
what  sensations,  were  passing  through  her  soul.  Nor 
could  he  ever  have.  They  might  stand  together  thus, 
isolated  from  all  the  world,  through  an  eternity  of 
physical  contact,  and  he  would  never  attain  such 
knowledge.  She  would  always  remain  aloof,  mys- 
terious, evasive.  He  resolved  that  at  all  events  as 
far  as  he  himself  was  concerned,  there  should  be  no 
barrier  between  them.  He  would  lay  open  to  her 
the  deepest  recesses  of  his  heart. 

He  began  a  hurried  incoherent  history  of  his  pas- 
sion, of  its  growth,  its  subtleties,  its  intensity.  He 
tried  to  make  her  realize  what  she  had  become  for 
him,  how  she  filled  every  hour  of  every  day  with  her 
image.  He  explained  to  her  how  clearly  and  fully 
he  understood  the  difficulty,  the  impossibility,  of  his 
ever  bringing  her  to  care  for  him  as  he  cared  for 
her. 

He  even  went  so  far  as  to  allude  to  Mr.  Quincunx, 
and  implored  her  to  believe  that  he  would  be  well 
content  if  she  would  let  him  earn  money  enough  to 
support  both  her  and  Maurice,  either  in  Nevilton  or 
elsewhere,  if  it  would  cut  the  tragic  knot  of  her  fate 
to  join  her  destiny  to  that  of  the  forlorn  recluse. 

It  almost  seemed  as  though  this  final  stroke  of 
self-abnegation  excited  more  eloquence  in  him  than 
all  the  rest.  He  begged  and  conjured  her  to  cut 
boldly  loose  from  the  Romer  bonds,  and  marry  her 


426  WOOD   AND   STONE 

queer  friend,  if  he,  rather  than  any  other,  were  the 
choice  she  made.  His  language  became  so  vehe- 
ment, his  tone  so  impassioned  and  exalted,  that  the 
girl  began  to  look  apprehensively  at  him.  Even 
this  apprehension,  however,  was  a  thing  strangely 
removed  from  reality.  His  reckless  words  rose  and 
fell  upon  the  air  and  mixed  with  the  rising  wind  as 
if  they  were  words  remembered  from  some  previous 
existence.  The  man's  whole  figure,  his  gaunt  frame, 
his  stooping  shoulders,  his  long  arms  and  lean  fingers, 
seemed  to  her  like  something  only  half-tangible, 
something  felt  and  seen  through  a  dim  medium  of 
obscuring  mist. 

Lacrima  felt  vaguely  as  though  all  this  were  hap- 
pening to  someone  else,  to  someone  she  had  read 
about  in  a  book,  or  had  known  in  remote  childhood. 
The  over-hanging  clouds,  the  damp  grass,  the  dis- 
tant ash-tree  with  the  forms  of  their  friends  beneath 
it,  all  these  things  seemed  to  group  themselves  in 
her  mind,  as  if  answering  to  some  strange  dramatic 
story,  which  was  not  the  story  of  her  life  at  all,  but 
of  some  other  harassed  and  troubled  spirit. 

In  the  depths  of  her  mind  she  shrank  away 
half-frightened  and  half-indifferent  from  this  man's 
impassioned  pleading  and  heroic  proposals.  The  hu- 
morously cynical  image  of  the  hermit  of  Dead  Man's 
Lane  crossed  her  mental  vision  as  a  sort  of  wavering 
Pharos  light  in  the  dreamy  twilight  of  her  conscious- 
ness. How  well  she  knew  with  what  goblin-like 
quiver  of  his  nostrils,  with  what  sardonic  gleam  of 
his  eyes,  he  would  have  listened  to  his  rival's  exalted 
rhetoric. 

In   some   strange   way   she  felt   amost   angry   with 


HTJLLAWAY  427 


this  bolder,  less  cautious  lover,  for  being  what  her 
poor  nervous  Maurice  never  could  be.  She  caught 
herself  shuddering  at  the  thought  of  the  drastic 
effort,  the  stern  focussing  of  will-power  which  the 
acceptance  of  any  one  of  his  daring  suggestions  would 
imply.  Perhaps,  who  can  say,  there  had  come  to 
be  a  sort  of  voluptuous  pleasure  in  thus  lying  back 
upon  her  destiny  and  letting  herself  be  carried  for- 
ward, at  the  caprice  of  other  wills  than  her  own. 

Mingled  with  these  other  complex  reactions,  there 
was  borne  in  upon  her,  as  she  listened  to  him,  a 
queer  sense  of  the  absolute  unimportance  of  the 
whole  matter.  The  long  strain  upon  her  nerves,  of 
her  sojourn  in  Nevilton  House,  had  left  her  physi- 
cally so  weary  that  she  lacked  the  life-energy  to  sup- 
ply the  life-illusion.  The  ardour  and  passion  of 
Andersen's  suggestions  seemed,  for  all  their  dramatic 
pathos,  to  belong  to  a  world  she  had  left  —  a  world 
from  which  she  had  risen  or  sunk  so  completely,  that 
all  return  was  impossible.  Her  nature  was  so  hope- 
lessly the  true  Pariah-nature,  that  the  idea  of  the 
effort  implied  in  any  struggle  to  escape  her  doom, 
seemed  worse  than  the  doom  itself. 

This  inhibition  of  any  movement  of  effective  re- 
sistance in  the  Pariah-type  is  the  thing  that  normal 
temperaments  find  most  difficult  of  all  to  under- 
stand. It  would  seem  almost  incredible  to  a  healthy 
minded  person  that  Lacrima  should  deliberately  let 
herself  be  driven  into  such  a  fate  without  some  last 
desperate  struggle.  Those  who  find  it  so,  however, 
under-estimate  that  curious  passion  of  submission 
from  which  these  victims  of  circumstance  suffer,  a 
passion  of  submission  which   is   itself,  in  a  profoundly 


428  \YOOD  AND   STONE 

subtle  way,  a  sort  of  narcotic  or  drug  to  the  wretch- 
edness they  pass  through. 

"I  cannot  do  it,"  she  repeated  in  a  low  tired  voice, 
"though  I  think  it's  generous,  beyond  description, 
what  you  want  to  do  for  me.  But  I  cannot  do  it. 
It's  difficult  somehow  to  tell  you  why,  James  dear; 
there  are  certain  things  that  are  hard  to  say,  even 
to  people  that  we  love  as  much  as  I  love  you.  For 
I  do  love  you,  in  spite  of  everything.  I  hope  you 
realize  that.  And  I  know  that  you  have  a  deep 
noble  heart." 

/  She  looked  at  him  with  wistful  and  appealing 
tenderness,  and  let  her  little  fingers  slip  into  his 
feverish  hand. 

When  she  said  the  words,  "I  do  love  you,"  a  shiv- 
ering ecstasy  shot  through  the  stone-carver's  veins, 
followed  by  a  ghastly  chilliness,  like  the  hand  of 
death,  as  he  grasped  their  complete  meaning.  The 
most  devastating  tone,  perhaps,  of  all,  for  an  im- 
passioned lover  to  hear,  is  that  particular  tone  of 
calm  tender  affection.  It  has  the  power  of  closing 
up  vistas  of  hope  more  effectively  than  the  expres- 
sion of  the  most  vigorous  repulsion.  There  was  a 
ring  of  weary  finality  in  her  voice  that  echoed  through 
his  mind,  like  the  tread  of  coffin-bearers  through  a 
darkened  passage.  Things  had  reached  their  hope- 
less point,  and  the  two  were  standing  mute  and 
silent,  in  the  attitude  of  persons  taking  a  final  fare- 
well of  one  another,  when  a  noisy  group  of  village 
maids,  on  their  dilatory  road  to  the  glove-factory, 
made  their  voices  audible  from  the  further  side  of 
the  nearest  hedge. 

They  both  turned  instantaneously  to  see  how  this 


HULLAWAY  429 


danger  of  discovery  affected  their  friends,  and  neither 
of  them  was  surprised  to  note  that  the  younger 
Andersen  had  left  his  companion  and  was  strolHng 
casually  in  the  direction  of  the  voices.  As  soon  as 
he  saw  that  they  had  observed  this  manoeuvre  he 
began  beckoning  to  James. 

"We'd  better  separate,  my  friend,"  whispered 
Lacrima  hastily,  "I'll  go  back  to  Gladys.  She  and 
I  must  take  the  lane  way  and  you  and  Luke  the 
path  by  the  barn.  We'll  meet  again  before  —  before 
anything  happens." 

They  separated  accordingly  and  as  the  two  girls 
passed  through  the  gate  that  led  into  the  Nevilton 
road,  they  could  distinctly  hear,  across  the  fields, 
the  ringing  laughter  of  the  high-spirited  glove-makers 
as  they  chaflPed  and  rallied  the  two  stone-carvers 
through  the  thick  bramble  hedge  which  intervened 
between  them. 


CHAPTER   XVII 
SAGITTARIUS 

THE  summer  of  the  year  whose  events,  in  so  far 
as  they  affected  a  certain  little  group  of  Nevil- 
ton  people  we  are  attempting  to  describe, 
seemed,  to  all  concerned,  to  pass  more  and  more 
rapidly,  as  the  days  began  again  to  shorten.  July 
gave  place  to  August,  and  Mr.  Goring's  men  were 
already  at  work  upon  the  wheat-harvest.  In  the 
hedges  appeared  all  those  peculiar  signals  of  the 
culmination  of  the  season's  glory,  which  are,  by  one 
of  nature's  most  emphatic  ironies,  the  signals  also  of 
its  imminent  decline. 

Old-man's-beard,  for  instance,  hung  its  feathery 
clusters  on  every  bush;  and,  in  shadier  places,  white 
and  black  briony  twined  their  decorative  leaves  and 
delicate  flowers.  The  blossom  of  the  blackberry 
bushes  was  already  giving  place  to  unripe  fruit,  and 
the  berries  of  traveller's-joy  were  beginning  to  turn 
red.  Hips  and  haws  still  remained  in  that  vague 
colourless  state  which  renders  them  indistinguishable 
to  all  eyes  save  those  of  the  birds,  but  the  juicy 
clusters  of  the  common  night-shade  —  "  green  grapes 
of  Proserpine"  —  greeted  the  wanderer  with  their 
poisonous  Circe-like  attraction,  from  their  thrones  of 
dog-wood  and  maple,  and  whispered  of  the  autumn's 
approach.  In  dry  deserted  places  the  scarlet  splen- 
dour of  poppies  was  rapidly    yielding  ground  to  all 


SACxITTARIUS  431 

those  queer  herbal  plants,  purplish  or  whitish  in  hue  — 
the  wild  hyssop,  or  marjoram,  being  the  most  notice- 
able of  them — which  more  than  anything  else  denote 
the  coming  on  of  the  equinox.  From  dusty  heaps  of 
rubbish  the  aromatic  daisy-like  camomile  gave  forth 
its  pungent  fragrance,  and  in  damper  spots  the  tall 
purple  heads  of  hemp-agrimony  flouted  the  dying 
valerian. 

An  appropriate  date  at  the  end  of  the  month  had 
been  fixed  for  the  episcopal  visit  to  Nevilton;  and 
the  candidates  for  confirmation  were  already  begin- 
ning, according  to  their  various  natures  and  tempera- 
ments, to  experience  that  excited  anticipation,  which, 
even  in  the  dullest  intelligence,  such  an  event  arouses. 

The  interesting  ceremony  of  Gladys  Romer's  bap- 
tism had  been  fixed  for  a  week  earlier  than  this, 
a  fanciful  sentiment  in  the  agitated  mind  of  Mr. 
Clavering  having  led  to  the  selection  of  this  parti- 
cular day  on  the  strange  ground  of  its  exact  coinci- 
dence with  the  anniversary  of  a  certain  famous  saint. 

The  marriage  of  Gladys  with  Dangelis,  and  of 
Lacrima  with  John  Goring,  was  to  take  place  early 
in  September,  Mrs.  Romer  having  stipulated  for 
reasons  of  domestic  economy  that  the  two  events 
should   be  simultaneous. 

Another  project  of  some  importance  to  at  least 
three  persons  in  Nevilton,  was  now,  as  one  might 
say,  in  the  air;  though  this  was  by  no  means  a 
matter  of  public  knowledge.  I  refer  to  Vennie  Sel- 
dom's  fixed  resolution  to  be  received  into  the  Cath- 
olic Church  and  to  become  a  nun. 

Ever  since  her  encounter  in  the  village  street  with 
the  loquacious  Mr.  Wone,  Vennie  had  been  oppressed 


432  WOOD   AND   STONE 

by  an  invincible  distaste  for  the  things  and  people 
that  surrounded  her.  Her  longing  to  give  the  world 
the  slip  and  devote  herself  completely  to  the  reli- 
gious life  had  been  incalculably  deepened  by  her 
disgust  at  what  she  considered  the  blasphemous  in- 
troduction of  the  Holy  Name  into  the  Christian  Can- 
didate's political  canvassing.  The  arguments  of  Mr. 
Taxater  and  the  conventional  anglicanism  of  her 
mother,  were,  compared  with  this,  only  mild  incen- 
tives to  the  step  she  meditated.  The  whole  fabric 
of  her  piety  and  her  taste  had  been  shocked  to  their 
foundations  by  the  unctuous  complacency  of  Mr. 
Romer's  evangelical  rival. 

Vennie  felt,  as  she  stood  aside,  in  her  retired  rou- 
tine, and  watched  the  political  struggle  sway  to  and 
fro  in  the  village,  as  though  the  champions  of  both 
causes  were  odiously  and  repulsively  in  the  wrong. 
The  sly  conservatism  of  the  quarry-owner  becoming, 
since  the  settlement  of  the  strike,  almost  fulsome 
in  its  flattery  of  the  working  classes,  struck  her  as 
the  most  unscrupulous  bid  for  power  that  she  had 
ever  encountered;  and  when,  combined  with  his  new 
pose  as  the  ideal  employer  and  landlord,  Mr.  Romer 
introduced  the  imperial  note,  and  talked  lavislily  of 
the  economic  benefits  of  the  Empire,  Vennie  felt 
as  though  all  that  was  beautiful  and  sacred  in  her 
feeling  for  the  country  of  her  birth,  was  blighted  and 
poisoned  at  the  root. 

But  Mr.  Wone's  attitude  of  mind  struck  her  as 
even  more  revolting.  The  quarry-owner  was  at 
least  frankly  and  flagrantly  cynical.  He  made  no 
attempt — unless  Gladys'  confirmation  was  to  be  re- 
garded as  such — to  conciliate  religious  sentiment.     He 


SAGITTARIUS  433 


never  went  to  church,  and  in  private  conversation  he 
expressed  his  atheistic  opinions   with   humorous  and 
careless   shamelessness.     But    Mr.    Wone's    intermin- 
ghng  of  Protestant    unction  with  political  chicanery 
struck  the  passionate  soul  of  the  young  girl  as  some- 
thing   very    nearly    approaching    the    "unpardonable 
sin."     Her   incisive   intelligence,    fortified   of   late   by 
conversations  with  Mr.  Taxater,  revolted,  too,  against 
the    vague    ethical    verbiage    and    loose    democratic 
sentiment  with  which  Mr.  Wone  garnished  his  lightest 
talk.     Since  Philip's  release  from  prison  and  his  reap- 
pearance in  the  village,  she  had  taken  the  opportun- 
ity of  having  several  interviews   with    the    Christian 
Candidate's  son,   and  these  interviews,   though   they 
saddened    and    perplexed    her,    increased    her    respect 
for  the  young  man  in  proportion  as  they  diminished 
it  for  his  father.     With  true  feminine  instinct  Vennie 
found   the    anarchist    more    attractive    than    the    so- 
cialist,   and    the    atheist    less    repugnant    than    the 
missionary. 

One  afternoon,  towards  the  end  of  the  first  week 
in  August,  Vennie  persuaded  Mr.  Taxater  to  accom- 
pany her  on  a  long  walk.  They  made  their  way 
through  the  wood  which  separates  the  fields  around 
Nevilton  Mount  from  the  fields  around  Leo's  Hill. 
Issuing  from  this  wood,  along  the  path  followed  by 
every  visitor  to  the  hill  who  wishes  to  avoid  its 
steeper  slopes,  they  strolled  leisurely  between  the 
patches  of  high  bracken-fern  and  looked  down  upon 
the  little  church  of  Athelston. 

Athleston  was  a  long,  rambling  village,  encircling 
the  northern  end  of  the  Leonian  promontory  and 
offering  shelter,  in    many  small  cottages  all  heavily 


434  WOOD  AND   STONE 

built  of  the  same  material,  to  those  of  the  workmen 
in  the  quarries  who  were  not  domiciled  in  Xevil- 
ton. 

"It  would  be  rather  nice,"  said  Vennie  to  the 
theologian,  "if  it  wouldn't  spoil  our  walk,  to  go 
and  look  at  that  carving  in  the  porch,  down  there. 
They  say  it  has  been  cleaned  lately,  and  the  figures 
show  up  more  clearly." 

The  papal  champion  gravely  surveyed  the  outline 
of  the  little  cruciform  church,  as  it  shimmered,  warm 
and  mellow,  in  the  misty  sunshine  at  their  feet. 

"Yes,  I  know,"  he  remarked.  "I  met  our  friend 
Andersen  there  the  other  day.  He  told  me  he  had 
been  doing  the  work  quite  alone.  He  said  it  was  one 
of  the  most  interesting  things  he  had  ever  done. 
By  the  way,  I  am  confident  that  that  rumour  we 
heard,  of  his  getting  unsettled  in  his  mind,  is  abso- 
lutely untrue.  I  have  never  found  him  more  sensible 
—  you  know  how  silent  he  is  as  a  rule?  When  I 
met  him  he  was  quite  eloquent  on  the  subject  of 
mediaeval  carving." 

Vennie  looked  down  and  smiled  —  a  sad  little  smile. 
"I'm  afraid,"  she  said;  "that  his  talking  so  freely 
is  not  quite  a  good  sign.  But  do  let's  go.  I  have 
never  looked  at  those  queer  figures  with  anyone  but 
my  mother;  and  you  know  the  way  she  has  of 
making  everything  seem  as  if  it  were  an  ornament 
on  her  own  mantelpiece." 

They  began  descending  the  hill,  Mr.  Taxater  dis- 
playing more  agility  than  might  have  been  expected 
of  him,  as  they  scrambled  down  between  furze- 
bushes,  rabbit-holes,  and  beds  of  yellow  trefoil. 

"How  dreadfully  I  shall  miss  you,  dear  child,"  he 


SAGITTARIUS  435 

said.  "  No  one  could  accuse  me  of  selfishness  in  further- 
ing your  wish  for  the  religious  life.  Half  the  pleas- 
ant discoveries  I've  made  in  this  charming  country 
have  been  due  to  you." 

The  young  girl  turned  and  regarded  him  affec- 
tionately. "You  have  been  more  than  a  father  to 
me,"  she  murmured. 

"Ah,  Vennie,  Vennie!  he  protested,  "you  mustn't 
talk  like  that.  After  all,  the  greatest  discovery  we 
have  made,  is  the  discovery  of  your  calling  for 
religion.  I  have  much  to  be  thankful  for.  It  is 
not  often  that  I  have  been  permitted  such  a  privilege. 
If  we  had  not  been  thrown  together,  who  knows  but 
that  the  influence  of  our  good  Clavering " 

Vennie  blushed  scarlet  at  the  mention  of  the  priest's 
name,  and  to  hide  her  confusion,  buried  her  head 
in  a  great  clump  of  rag-wort,  pressing  its  yellow 
clusters  vehemently  against  her  cheeks,  with  agitated 
trembling  hands. 

When  she  lifted  up  her  face,  the  fair  hair  under  her 
hat  was  sprinkled  with  dewy  moisture.  "The  turn 
of  the  year  has  come,"  she  said.  "There's  mist  on 
everything  today."  She  smiled,  with  a  quick  em- 
barrassed glance  at  her  companion. 

"The  turn  of  the  year  has  come,"  repeated  the 
champion  of  the  papacy. 

They  descended  the  slope  of  yet  another  field,  and 
then  paused  again,  leaning  upon  a  gate. 

"Have  you  ever  thought  how  strange  it  is,"  re- 
marked the  girl,  as  they  turned  to  survey  the  scene 
around  them,  "that  those  two  hills  should  still,  in 
a  way,  represent  the  struggle  between  good  and 
evil?     I  always  wish  that  my  ancestors  had  built  a 


436  WOOD  AND  STONE 


chapel  on  Nevilton  Mount  instead  of  that  silly  little 
tower." 

The  theologian  fixed  his  eyes  on  the  two  em- 
inences which,  from  the  point  where  they  stood, 
showed  so  emphatically  against  the  smouldering 
August  sky. 

"Why  do  you  call  Leo's  Hill  evil?"  he  asked. 

Vennie  frowned.  "I  always  have  felt  like  that 
about  it,"  she  answered.  "It's  an  odd  fancy  I've  got. 
I  can't  quite  explain  it.  Perhaps  it's  because  I  know 
something  of  the  hard  life  of  the  quarry-men.  Per- 
haps it's  because  of  Mr.  Romer.  I  really  can't  tell 
you.     But  that's  the  feeling  I  have!" 

"Our  worthy  Mr.  Wone  would  thank  you,  if  you 
lent  him  your  idea  for  use  in  his  speeches,"  remarked 
the  theologian  with  a  chuckle. 

"That's  just  it!"  cried  Vennie.  "It  teases  me, 
more  than  I  can  say,  that  the  cause  of  the  poor 
should  be  in  his  hands.  I  can't  associate  him  with 
anything  good  or  sacred.  His  being  the  one  to 
oppose  Mr.  Romer  makes  me  feel  as  though  God  had 
left  us  completely,  left  us  at  the  mercy  of  the  false 
prophets!" 

"Child,  child!"  expostulated  Mr.  Taxater  —  " Cm5- 
todit  Dominus  animas  sanctorum  suorum;  de  manu 
peccatoris  liberabit  eos." 

"But  it  is  so  strange,"  continued  Vennie.  "It  is 
one  of  the  things  I  cannot  understand.  Why  should 
God  have  to  use  other  means  than  those  His  church 
offers  to  defeat  the  designs  of  wicked  people?  I  wish 
miracles  happened  more  often!  Sometimes  I  dream 
of  them  happening.  I  dreamt  the  other  night  that 
an  angel,  with  a  great  silver  sword,  stood  on  the  top 


SAGITTARIUS  437 

of  Nevilton  Mount,  and  cried  aloud  to  all  the  dead 
in  the  churchyard.  Why  can't  God  send  real  angels 
to  fight  His  battles,  instead  of  using  wolves  in 
sheep's  clothing  like  that  wretched  Mr.  Wone?" 

The  champion  of  the  papacy  smiled.  "You  are 
too  hard  on  our  poor  Candidate,  Vennie.  There's 
more  of  the  sheep  than  the  wolf  about  our  worthy 
Wone,  after  all.  But  you  touch  upon  a  large  ques- 
tion, my  dear;  a  large  question.  That  great  circle, 
whose  centre  is  everywhere  and  its  circumference 
nowhere,  as  St.  Thomas  says,  must  needs  include 
many  ways  to  the  fulfilment  of  His  ends,  which  are 
mysterious  to  us.  God  is  sometimes  pleased  to  use 
the  machinations  of  the  most  evil  men,  even  their 
sensual  passions,  and  their  abominable  vices,  to 
bring  about  the  fulfilment  of  His  will.  And  we,  dear 
child,"  he  added  after  a  pause,  "must  follow  God's 
methods.  That  is  why  the  church  has  always  con- 
demned as  a  dangerous  heresy  that  Tolstoyan  doc- 
trine of  submission  to  evil.  We  must  never  submit 
to  evil!  Our  duty  is  to  use  against  it  every  weapon 
the  world  offers.  Weapons  that  in  themselves  are 
unholy,  become  holy  —  nay !  even  sacred  —  when 
used  in  the  cause  of  God  and  His  church." 

Vennie  remained  puzzled  and  silent.  She  felt  a 
vague,  remote  dissatisfaction  with  her  friend's  argu- 
ment; but  she  found  it  difficult  to  answer.  She 
glanced  sadly  up  at  the  cone-shaped  mount  above 
them,  and  wished  that  in  place  of  that  heathen- 
looking  tower,  she  could  see  her  angel  with  the 
silver    sword. 

"It  is  all  very  confusing,"  she  murmured  at  last, 
"and  I  shall  be  glad  when  I  am  out  of  it." 


438  WOOD  AND   STONE 

The  theologian  laid  his  hand  —  the  hand  that 
ought  to  have  belonged  to  a  prince  of  the  church  — 
upon  his  companion's. 

"You  will  be  out  of  it  soon,  child,"  he  said,  "and 
then  you  will  help  us  by  your  prayers.  We  who  are 
the  temporal  monks  of  the  great  struggle  are  bound 
to  soil  our  hands  in  the  dust  of  the  arena.  But 
your  prayers,  and  the  prayers  of  many  like  you, 
cleanse  them  continually  from  such  unhappy  stains." 

Even  at  the  moment  he  was  uttering  these  profound 
words,  Mr.  Taxater  was  wondering  in  his  heart 
how  far  his  friend's  inclination  to  a  convent  depended 
upon  an  impulse  much  more  natural  and  feminine 
than  the  desire  to  avoid  the  Mr.  Romers  and  Mr. 
Wones  of  this  poor  world.  He  made  a  second  rather 
brutal  experiment. 

"We  must  renounce,"  he  said,  "all  these  plausible 
poetic  attempts  to  be  wiser  than  God's  Holy  Church. 
That  is  one  of  the  faults  into  which  our  worthy 
Clavering  falls." 

Once  more  the  tell-tale  scarlet  rushed  into  the 
cheeks  of  Nevilton's  little  nun. 

"Yes,"  she  answered,  stooping  to  pluck  a  spray  of 
wild  basil,  "I  know." 

They  opened  the  gate,  and  very  soon  found  them- 
selves at  the  entrance  to  Athelston  church.  Late 
summer  flowers,  planted  in  rows  on  each  side  of 
the  path,  met  them  with  a  ravishing  fragrance. 
Stocks  and  sweet-williams  grew  freely  among  the 
graves;  and  tall  standard  roses  held  up  the  wealth 
of  their  second  blossoming,  like  chalices  full  of 
red  and  white  wine.  Heavy-winged  brown  butter- 
flies   fluttered   over   the   grass,    like   the   earth-drawn 


SAGITTARIUS  439 

spirits,  Vennie  thought,  of  such  among  the  dead  as 
were  loath  to  leave  the  scene  of  their  earthly  pleas- 
ures. Mounted  upon  a  step-ladder  in  the  porch  wa-s 
the  figure  of  James  Andersen,  absorbed  in  removing 
the  moss  and  lichen  from  the  carving  in  the  central 
arch. 

He  came  down  at  once  when  he  perceived  their 
approach.  "Look!"  he  said,  with  a  wave  of  his  hand, 
"you  can  see  what  it  is  now." 

Obedient  to  his  words  they  both  gazed  curiously 
at  the  quaint  early  Norman  relief.  It  represented 
a  centaur,  with  a  drawn  bow  and  arrow,  aiming  at 
a  retreating  lion,  which  was  sneaking  off  in  humor- 
ously depicted  terror. 

"That  is  King  Stephen,"  said  the  stone-carver, 
pointing  to  the  centaur.  "And  the  beast  he  is 
aiming  at  is  Queen  Maud.  Stephen's  zodiacal  sign 
was  Sagittarius,  and  the  woman's  was  Leo.  Hence 
the  arrow  he  is  aiming." 

Vennie's  mind,  reverting  to  her  fanciful  distinction 
between  the  two  eminences,  and  woman-like,  asso- 
ciating everything  she  saw  with  the  persons  of  her 
own  drama,  at  once  began  to  discern,  between  the 
retreating  animal  and  the  fair-haired  daughter  of  the 
owner  of  Leo's  Hill,  a  queer  and  grotesque  resem- 
blance. 

She  heaved  a  deep  sigh.  What  would  she  not  give 
to  see  her  poor  priest-centaur  aim  such  an  arrow  of 
triumph  at  the  heart  of  his  insidious  temptress! 

"I  think  you  have  made  them  stand  out  won- 
derfully clear,"  she  said  gently.  "Hasn't  he,  Mr. 
Taxater?" 

The   stone-carver   threw    down    the   instrument   he 


440  WOOD  AND   STONE 

was  using,  and  folded  his  arms.  His  dark,  foreign- 
looking  countenance  wore  a  very  curious  expression. 

"I  wanted  to  finish  this  job,"  he  remarked,  in  a 
slow  deep  voice,  "before  I  turn  into  stone  myself." 

"Come,  come,  my  friend,"  said  Mr.  Taxater,  while 
Vennie  stared  in  speechless  alarm  at  the  carver's 
face.  "You  mustn't  talk  like  that!  You  people 
get  a  wrong  perspective  in  things.  Remember,  this 
is  no  longer  the  Stone  Age.  The  power  of  stone  was 
broken  once  for  all,  when  certain  women  of  Palestine 
found  that  stone,  which  we've  all  heard  of,  lifted 
out  of  its  place!  Since  then  it  is  to  wood  —  the 
wood  out  of  which  His  cross  was  made  —  not  to 
stone,  that  we  must  look." 

The  carver  raised  his  long  arm  and  pointed  in  the 
direction  of  Leo's  Hill.  "Twenty  years,"  he  said, 
"have  I  been  working  on  this  stone.  I  used  to  de- 
spise such  work.  Then  I  grew  to  care  for  it.  Then 
there  came  a  change.  I  loved  the  work!  It  was  the 
only  thing  I  loved.  I  loved  to  feel  the  stone  under 
my  hands,  and  to  watch  it  yielding  to  my  tools.  I 
think  the  soul  of  it  must  have  passed  into  my  soul. 
It  seemed  to  know  me;  to  respond  to  me.  We  be- 
came like  lovers,  the  stone  and  I!"  He  laughed  an 
uneasy,  disconcerting  laugh;    and  went  on. 

"But  that  is  not  all.  Another  change  came.  She 
came  into  my  life.  I  needn't  tell  you,  Miss  Seldom, 
who  I  mean.  You  know  well  enough.  These  things 
cannot  be  hidden.  Nothing  can  be  hidden  that 
happens  here!  She  came  and  was  kind  to  me. 
She  is  kind  to  me  still.  But  they  have  got  hold  of 
her.  She  can't  resist  them.  Why  she  can't,  I  cannot 
say;    but  it  seems  impossible.     She  talks  to  me  like 


SAGITTARIUS  441 

a  person  in  a  dream.  They're  going  to  marry  her 
to  that  brute  Goring.  You've  heard  that  I  suppose? 
But  of  course  it's  nothing  to  you!    Why  should  it  be?" 

He  paused,  and  Vennie  interrupted  him  sharply. 
"It  is  a  great  deal  to  us,  Mr.  Andersen!  Every 
cruel  thing  that  is  done  in  a  place  affects  everyone 
who  lives  in  the  place.  If  Mr.  Taxater  and  —  and 
Mr.  Clavering  —  thought  that  Miss  Traffic  was 
being  driven  into  this  marriage,  I'm  sure  they  would 
not  allow  it!  They  would  do  something  —  every- 
thing —  to  stop  such  an  outrage.  Wouldn't  you,  Mr. 
Taxater?  " 

"But  surely,  Vennie,"  said  the  theologian,  "you 
have  heard  something  of  this?  You  can't  be  quite 
so  oblivious,  as  all  that,  to  the  village  scandal?" 

He  spoke  with  a  certain  annoyance  as  people  are 
apt  to  do,  when  some  disagreeable  abuse,  which  they 
have  sought  to  forget,  is  brought  vividly  before  them. 

Vennie,  too,  became  irritable.  The  question  of 
Lacrima's  marriage  had  more  than  once  given  her 
conscience  a  sharp  stab.  "I  think  it  is  a  shame  to 
us  all,"  she  cried  vehemently,  "that  this  should  be 
allowed.  It  is  only  lately  that  I've  heard  rumours 
of  it,  and  I  took  them  for  mere  gossip.  It's  been  on 
my  mind."  She  looked  almost  sternly  at  the  the- 
ologian. "I  meant  to  talk  to  you  about  it.  But 
other  things  came  between.  I  haven't  seen  Lacrima 
for  several  weeks.  Surely,  if  it  is  as  Mr.  Andersen 
says,  something  ought  to  be  done!  It  is  a  horrible, 
perfectly  horrible  idea!"  She  covered  her  face  with 
her  hands  as  if  to  shut  out  some  unbearable  vision. 

James  Andersen  watched  them  both  intently,  lean- 
ing against  the  wood-work  of  the  church-door. 


442  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"I  thought  you  all  knew  of  this,"  he  said  presently. 
"Perhaps  you  did;  but  the  devil  prompted  you  to 
say  nothing.  There  are  a  great  many  things  in  this 
world  which  are  done  while  people  —  good  people  — 
look  on  —  and  nothing  said.  Do  you  wonder  now 
that  the  end  of  this  business  will  be  a  curious  one; 
I  mean  for  me?  For  you  know,  of  course,  what 
is  going  to  happen.'^  You  know  why  I  have  been 
chosen  to  work  at  this  particular  piece  of  carving? 
And  why,  ever  since  I  quarelled  with  Luke  and 
drank  in  Hullaway  Inn,  I  have  heard  voices  in  my 
head?  The  reason  of  that  is,  that  Leo's  Hill  is  angry 
because  I  have  deserted  it.  Every  stone  I  touch  is 
angry,  and  keeps  talking  to  me  and  upbraiding  me. 
The  voices  I  hear  are  the  voices  of  all  the  stones  I 
have  ever  worked  with  in  my  life.  But  they  needn't 
fret  themselves.  The  end  will  surprise  even  them. 
They  do  not  know,"  —  here  his  voice  took  a  lower 
tone,  and  he  assumed  that  ghastly  air  of  imparting 
a  piece  of  surprising,  but  quite  natural,  information, 
which  is  one  of  the  most  sinister  tokens  of  mono- 
mania,—  "that  I  shall  very  soon  be,  even  as  they  are! 
Isn't  it  funny  they  don't  know  that,  Miss  Seldom? 
Isn't  it  a  curious  thing,  Mr.  Taxater?  I  thought  of 
that,  just  now,  as  I  chipped  the  dirt  from  King 
Stephen.  Even  he  didn't  know,  the  foolish  centaur! 
And  yet  he  has  been  up  there,  seeing  this  sort  of 
thing  done,  for  seven  hundred  years!  I  expect  he 
has  seen  so  many  girls  dragged  under  this  arch,  with 
sick  terror  in  their  hearts,  that  he  has  grown  callous 
to  it.  A  callous  king!  A  knavish-smiling  king!  It 
makes  me  laugh  to  think  how  little  he  cares!" 

The  unfortunate  man  did  indeed  proceed  to  laugh; 


SAGITTARIUS  443 

but  the  sound  of  it  was  so  ghastly,  even  to  himself, 
that  he  quickly  became  grave. 

"Luke  will  be  here  soon,"  he  said.  "Luke  has 
always  come  for  me,  these  last  few  days,  when  his 
work  is  over.  It'll  be  over  soon  now,  I  think.  He 
may  be  here  any  moment;  so  I'd  better  finish  the 
job.  Don't  you  worry  about  Lacrima,  ladies  and 
gentlemen!  She'll  fly  away  with  the  rooks.  This 
centaur-king  will  never  reach  her  with  his  arrows. 
It'll  be  me,  not  her,  he'll  turn  into  stone!" 

He  became  silent  and  continued  his  labour  upon  the 
carving.  The  wonder  was  that  with  his  head  full  of 
such  mad  fancies  he  could  manage  so  delicate  a 
piece  of  work.  Mr.  Taxater  and  Vennie  watched 
him  in  amazement. 

"I  think,"  whispered  the  latter  presently,  "we'd 
better  wait  in  the  churchyard  till  his  brother  comes. 
I  don't  like  leaving  him  in  this  state." 

Mr.  Taxater  nodded,  and  retreating  to  the  further 
end  of  the  path,  they  sat  down  together  upon  a 
flat  tombstone. 

"I  am  sorry,"  said  Mr.  Taxater,  after  a  minute 
or  two's  silence,  "that  I  spoke  rather  crossly  to  you 
just  now.  The  truth  is,  the  man's  reference  to  that 
Italian  girl  made  me  feel  ashamed  of  myself.  I  have 
not  your  excuse  of  being  ignorant  of  what  was  going 
on.  I  have,  in  fact,  been  meaning  to  talk  to  you 
about  it  for  some  weeks;  but  I  hesitated,  wishing  to 
be  quite  sure  of  my  ground  first. 

"Even  now,  you  must  remember,  we  have  no  cer- 
tain authority  to  go  upon.  But  I'm  afraid  —  I'm 
very  much  afraid  —  what  Andersen  says  is  true. 
It  is  evidently  his  own  certain  knowledge  of  it  that 


444  \YOOD   AND   STONE 

has  upset  his  brain.  And  I'm  inclined  to  take  his 
word  for  it.  I  fear  the  girl  must  have  told  him  her- 
self; and  it  was  the  shock  of  hearing  it  from  her 
that  had  this  effect. 

"There's  no  doubt  he's  seriously  ill.  But  if  I  know 
anything  of  these  things,  it's  rather  a  case  of  extreme 
nervous  agitation  than  actual  insanity.  In  any 
event,  it's  a  relief  to  remember  that  this  kind  of 
mania  is,  of  all  forms  of  brain-trouble,  the  easiest 
cured." 

Vennie  made  an  imperious  little  gesture.  "We 
must  cure  him!"  she  cried.  "We  must!  We  must! 
And  the  only  way  to  do  it,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  is  to 
stop  this  abominable  marriage.  Lacrima  can't  be 
doing  it  willingly.  No  girl  would  marry  a  man  like 
that,  of  her  own  accord." 

Mr.  Taxater  shook  his  head.  "I'm  afraid  there 
are  few  people,"  he  remarked,  "that  some  girl  or 
other  wouldn't  marry  if  the  motive  were  strong 
enough!  The  question  is,  what  is  the  motive  in  this 
instance?" 

"What  can  Mr.  Quincunx  be  thinking  of.''"  said 
Vennie.  "He  hasn't  been  up  to  see  mother  lately. 
In  fact,  I  don't  think  he  has  been  in  our  house  since 
he  began  working  in  Yeoborough.  That's  another 
abominable  shame!  It  seems  to  me  more  and  more 
clear  that  there's  an  evil  destiny  hanging  over  this 
place,  driving  people  on  to  do  wicked  things!" 

"I'm  afraid  we  shall  get  small  assistance  from 
Mr.  Quincunx,"  said  the  theologian.  "The  relations 
between  him  and  Lacrima  are  altogether  beyond  my 
power  of  unravelling.  But  I  cannot  imagine  his 
taking  any  sort  of  initiative  in  any  kind  of  difficulty." 


SAGITTARIUS  445 

"Then  what  are  we  to  do?"  pleaded  Veniiie,  look- 
ing anxiously  into  the  diplomatist's  face. 

Mr.  Taxatcr  rested  his  chin  upon  the  handle  of  his 
cane  and  made  no  reply. 

At  this  moment  the  gate  clicked  behind  them,  and 
Luke  Andersen  appeared.  He  glanced  hastily  to- 
wards the  porch;  but  his  brother  was  absorbed  in 
his  work  and  apparently  had  heard  nothing.  Step- 
ping softly  along  the  edge  of  the  path  he  approached 
the  two  friends.  He  looked  very  anxious  and 
troubled. 

Raising  his  hat  to  Vennie,  he  made  a  gesture  with 
his  hand  in  his  brother's  direction.  "Have  you  seen 
him?"  he  enquired.     "Has  he  talked  to  you?" 

The  theologian  nodded. 

"Oh,  I  think  all  this  is  dreadful!"  whispered  Vennie. 
"I'm  more  distressed  than  I  can  tell  you.  I'm 
afraid  he's  very,  very  ill.  And  he  keeps  talking 
about  Miss  Traffio.  Surely  something  can  be  done, 
Mr.  Andersen,  to  stop  that  marriage  before  it's  too 
late?" 

Luke  turned  upon  her  with  an  expression  completely 
different  from  any  she  had  ever  seen  him  wear  before. 
He  seemed  to  have  suddenly  grown  much  older. 
His  mouth  was  drawn,  and  a  little  open;  and  his 
cheeks  were  pale  and  indented  by  deep  lines. 

"I  would  give  my  soul,"  he  said  with  intense  em- 
phasis, "to  have  this  thing  otherwise.  I  have  al- 
ready been  to  Lacrima  —  to  Miss  TrafBo,  I  mean  — 
but  she  will  do  nothing.  She  is  mad,  too,  I  think. 
I  hoped  to  get  her  to  marry  my  brother,  off-hand, 
anyhow;  and  leave  the  place  with  him.  But  she 
won't  hear  of  it.     I  can't  understand  her!     It  almost 


446  WOOD  AND   STONE 

seems  as  if  she  wanted  to  marry  that  clown.  But 
she  can't  really;  it's  impossible.  I'm  afraid  that 
fool  Quincunx  is  at  the  bottom  of  it." 

"Something  must  be  done!  Something  must  be 
done!"  wailed  Vennie. 

*' Sustinuit  anima  mea  in  verbo  ejus!"  muttered  Mr. 
Taxater.     '' Speravit  aninia  mea  in  Domino^ 

"I  shouldn't  mind  so  much  the  state  he's  in," 
continued  Luke,  "if  I  didn't  remember  how  my 
mother  went.  She  got  just  like  this  before  she  died. 
It's  true  my  father  was  a  brute  to  her.  But  this 
different  kind  of  blow  seems  to  have  just  the  same 
effect  upon  James.  Fool  that  I  am,  I  must  needs 
start  a  miserable  quarrel  with  him  when  he  was  most 
worried.  If  anything  happens,  I  tell  you  I  shall  feel 
I'm  responsible  for  the  whole  thing,  and  no  one  else!" 

All  this  while  Mr.  Taxater  had  remained  silent, 
his  chin  on  the  handle  of  his  cane.  At  last  he  lifted 
up  his  head. 

"I  think,"  he  began  softly,  "I  should  rather  like  a 
word  alone  with  Mr.  Luke,  Vennie.  Perhaps  you 
wouldn't  mind  wandering  down  the  lane  a  step  or 
two?  Then  I  can  follow  you;  and  we'll  leave  this 
young  man  to  get  his  brother  home." 

The  girl  rose  obediently  and  pressed  the  youth's 
hand.  "If  anyone  can  help  you,"  she  said  with  a 
look  of  tender  sympathy,  "it  is  Mr.  Taxater.  He  has 
helped  me  in  my  trouble." 

As  soon  as  Vennie  was  out  of  hearing  the  theolo- 
gian looked  straight  into  Luke's  face. 

"I  have  an  idea,"  he  said,  "that  if  any  two  people 
can  find  a  way  out  of  this  wretched  business,  it  is 
you  and  I  together." 


SAGITTARIUS  447 

"Well,  sir,"  said  Luke,  seating  himself  by  Mr. 
Taxater's  side  and  glancing  apprehensively  towards 
the  church-porch;  "I  have  tried  what  I  can  do  with 
Miss  Romer,  but  she  maintains  that  nothing  she  can 
say  will  make  any  difference  to  Miss  Traffio." 

"I  fancy  there  is  one  thing,  however,  that  would 
make  a  difference  to  Mr.  Quincunx,"  remarked  the 
theologian  significantly.  "I  am  taking  for  granted," 
he  added,  "that  it  is  this  particular  marriage  which 
weighs  so  heavily  on  your  brother.  He  would 
not  suffer  if  he  saw  her  wedded  to  a  man  she 
loved?" 

"Ah!"  exclaimed  Luke,  "your  idea  is  to  appeal  to 
Quincunx.  I've  thought  of  that,  too.  But  I'm 
afraid  its  hopeless.  He's  such  an  inconceivably 
helpless  person.     Besides,  he's  got  no  money." 

"Suppose  we  secured  him  the  money?"  said  Mr. 
Taxater. 

Luke's  countenance  momentarily  brightened;  but 
the  cloud  soon  settled  on  it  again. 

"We  couldn't  get  enough,"  he  said  with  a  sigh. 
"Unless,"  he  added,  with  a  glimmer  of  humour,  "you 
or  some  other  noble  person  have  more  cash  to  dispose 
of  than  I  fancy  is  at  all  likely!  To  persuade  Quin- 
cunx into  any  bold  activity  we  should  have  to  guar- 
antee him  a  comfortable  annuity  for  the  rest  of  his 
life,  and  an  assurance  of  his  absolute  security  from 
Romer's  vengeance.  It  would  have  to  be  enough 
for  Lacrima,  too,  you  understand!" 

The  theologian  shook  the  dew-drops  from  a  large 
crimson  rose  which  hung  within  his  reach. 

"What  precise  sum  would  you  suggest,"  he  asked, 
**as  likely  to  be  a  sufficient  inducement?" 


448  WOOD   AND   STONE 

The  stone-carver  meditated.  "Those  two  could 
live  quite  happily,"  he  remarked  at  last,  "on  two 
hundred  a  year." 

"It  is  a  large  amount  to  raise,"  said  Mr.  Taxater. 
"I  fear  it  is  quite  beyond  my  power  and  the  power  of 
the  Seldoms,  even  if  we  combined  our  efforts.  How 
right  Napoleon  was,  when  he  said  that  in  any  cam- 
paign, the  first,  second,  and  third  requisite  was 
money ! 

"It  only  shows  how  foolish  those  critics  of  the 
Catholic  Church  arc,  who  blame  her  for  laying  stress 
upon  the  temporal  side  of  our  great  struggle  against 
evil.  In  this  world,  as  things  go,  one  always  strikes 
sooner  or  later  against  the  barrier  of  money.  The 
money-question  lies  at  the  bottom  of  every  sub- 
terranean abuse  and  every  hidden  iniquity  that  we 
unmask.  It's  a  wretched  thing  that  it  should  be 
so,  but  we  have  to  accept  it;  until  one  of  Vennie's 
angels" — he  added  in  an  under-tone  —  "descends 
to  help  us!  Your  poor  brother  began  talking  just 
now  about  the  power  of  stone.  I  referred  him  to 
the  Cross  of  our  Lord  —  which  is  made  of  another 
material ! 

"But  unfortunately  in  the  stress  of  this  actual 
struggle,  you  and  I,  my  dear  Andersen,  find  ourselves, 
as  you  see,  compelled  to  call  in  the  help,  not  of  wood, 
but  of  gold.  Gold,  and  gold  alone,  can  furnish  us 
with  the  means  of  undermining  these  evil  powers!" 

The  texture  of  Mr.  Taxater's  mind  was  so  nicely 
inter-threaded  with  the  opposite  strands  of  meta- 
physical and  Machiavellian  wisdom,  that  this  dis- 
course, fantastic  as  it  may  sound  to  us,  fell  from 
him  as  naturally  as  rain  from  a  heavy  cloud.     Luke 


SAGITTARIUS  449 

Andersen's  face  settled  into  an  expression  of  hopeless 
gloom. 

"The  thing  is  beyond  us,  then,"  he  said.  "I  cer- 
tainly can't  provide  an  enormous  sum  like  that. 
James'  and  my  savings  together  only  amount  to  a 
few  hundreds.  And  if  no  quixotic  person  can  be 
discovered  to  help  us,  we  are  bound  hand  and  foot. 

"Oh  I  should  like,"  he  cried,  "to  make  this  place 
ring  and  ting  with  our  triumph  over  that  damned 
Romer!" 

''Quis  est  iste  Rex  glorice?"  muttered  the  Theologian. 
"Dominns  fortis  et  potejis;  Dominus  potens  in  prcelio." 

"I  shall  never  dare,"  went  on  the  stone-carver, 
"to  get  my  brother  away  into  a  home.  The  least 
thought  of  such  a  thing  would  drive  him  absolutely 
out  of  his  mind.  He'll  have  to  be  left  to  drift  about 
like  this,  talking  madly  to  everyone  he  meets,  till 
something  terrible  happens  to  him.  God!  I  could 
howl  with  rage,  to  think  how  it  all  might  be  saved  if 
only  that  ass  Quincunx  had  a  little  gall!" 

Mr.  Taxater  tapped  the  young  man's  wrist  with 
his  white  fingers.  "I  think  we  can  put  gall  into  him 
between  us,"  he  said.     "I  think  so,  Andersen." 

"You've  got  some  idea,  sir!"  cried  Luke,  looking 
at  the  theologian.  "For  Heaven's  sake,  let's  have 
it!     I  am  completely  at  the  end  of  my  tether." 

"This  American  who  is  engaged  to  Gladys  is  im- 
mensely rich,  isn't  he?"  enquired  Mr.  Taxater. 

"Rich?"  answered  Luke.  "That's  not  the  word 
for  it!  The  fellow  could  buy  the  w^hole  of  Leo's 
Hill  and  not  know  the  difference." 

Mr.  Taxater  was  silent,  fingering  the  gold  cross 
upon  his  watch-chain. 


450  WOOD   AND   STONE 

"It  remains  with  yourself  then,"  he  remarked  at 
last. 

"What!"  cried  the  astonished  Luke. 

"I  happen  to  be  aware,"  continued  the  diplomatist, 
calmly,  "that  there  is  a  certain  fact  which  our  friend 
from  Ohio  would  give  half  his  fortune  to  know.  He 
certainly  would  very  willingly  sign  the  little  docu- 
ment for  it,  that  would  put  Mr.  Quincunx  and  Miss 
Traffio  into  a  position  of  complete  security.  It  is 
only  a  question  of  'the  terrain  of  negotiation,'  as  we 
say  in  our  ecclesiastical  circles." 

Luke  Andersen's  eyes  opened  very  widely,  and  the 
amazement  of  his  surprise  made  him  look  more  like 
an  astounded  faun  than  ever  —  a  faun  that  has 
come  bolt  upon  some  incredible  triumph  of  civiliza- 
tion. 

"I  will  be  quite  plain  with  you,  young  man,"  said 
the  theologian.  "It  has  come  to  my  knowledge 
that  you  and  Gladys  Romer  are  more  than  friends; 
have  been  more  than  friends,  for  a  good  while  past. 

"Do  not  wave  your  hand  in  that  way!  I  am  not 
speaking  without  evidence.  I  happen  to  know  as 
a  positive  fact  that  this  girl  is  neither  more  nor  less 
than  your  mistress.  I  am  also  inclined  to  believe  — 
though  of  this,  of  course,  I  cannot  be  sure  —  that,  as 
a  result  of  this  intrigue,  she  is  likely,  before  the 
autumn  is  over,  to  find  herself  in  a  position  of  con- 
siderable embarrassment.  It  is  no  doubt,  with  a 
view  to  covering  such  embarrassment  —  you  under- 
stand what  I  mean,  Mr.  Andersen?  —  that  she  is 
making  preparations  to  have  her  marriage  performed 
earlier  than  was  at  first  intended." 

"God!"  cried  the  astounded  youth,  losing  all  self- 


SAGITTARIUS  451 

possession,    "how,    under    the    sun,    did    you    get    to 
know  this?" 

Mr.  Taxater  smiled.  "We  poor  controversialists,"  he 
said,  "have  to  learn,  in  self-defence,  certain  innocent 
arts  of  observation.  I  don't  think  that  you  and  your 
mistress,"  he  added,  "have  been  so  extraordinarily  dis- 
creet, that  it  needed  a  miracle  to  discover  your  secret." 

Luke  Andersen  recovered  his  equanimity  with  a  vigor- 
ous effort.  "Well?"  he  said,  rising  from  his  seat  and 
looking  anxiously  at  his  brother,  "what  then?" 

As  he  uttered  these  words  the  young  stone-carver's 
mind  wrestled  in  grim  austerity  with  the  ghastly 
hint  thrown  out  by  his  companion.  He  divined  with 
an  icy  shock  of  horror  the  astounding  proposal  that 
this  amazing  champion  of  the  Faith  was  about  to 
unfold.  He  mentally  laid  hold  of  this  proposal  as  a 
man  might  lay  hold  upon  a  red-hot  bar  of  iron. 
The  interior  fibres  of  his  being  hardened  themselves 
to  grasp  without  shrinking  its  appalling  treachery. 

Luke  had  it  in  him,  below  his  urbane  exterior,  to 
rend  and  tear  away  every  natural,  every  human 
scruple.  He  had  it  in  him  to  be  able  to  envisage, 
with  a  shamelessness  worthy  of  some  lost  soul  of  the 
Florentine's  Inferno,  the  fire-scorched  walls  of  such  a 
stark  dilemma.  The  palpable  suggestion  which  now 
hung,  as  it  were,  suspended  in  the  air  between  them, 
was  a  suggestion  he  was  ready  to  grasp  by  the  throat. 

The  sight  of  his  brother's  gaunt  figure,  every  line  of 
which  he  knew  and  loved  so  well,  turned  his  conscience 
to  adamant.  Sinking  into  the  depths  of  his  soul,  as  a 
diver  might  sink  into  an  ice-cold  sea,  he  felt  that  there 
was  literally  nothing  he  would  not  do,  if  his  dear  Daddy 
James  could  be  restored  to  sanity  and  happiness. 


452  WOOD   AND   STONE 

Gladys?  He  would  walk  over  the  bodies  of  a  hun- 
dred Gladyses,  if  that  way,  and  that  alone,  led  to 
his  brother's  restoration! 

"What  then?"  he  repeated,  turning  a  bleak  but 
resolute  face  upon  Mr.  Taxater. 

The  theologian  continued:  "Why,  it  remains  for 
you,  or  for  someone  deputed  by  you,  to  reveal  to  our 
unsuspecting  American  exactly  how  his  betrothed  has 
betrayed  him.  I  have  no  doubt  that  in  the  dis- 
turbance this  will  cause  him  we  shall  have  no  diffi- 
culty in  securing  his  aid  in  this  other  matter.  It 
would  be  a  natural,  an  inevitable  revenge  for  him  to 
take.  Himself  a  victim  of  these  Romers,  what  more 
appropriate,  what  more  suitable,  than  that  he  should 
help  us  in  liberating  their  other  victims?  If  he  is  as 
wealthy  as  you  say,  it  would  be  a  mere  bagatelle  for 
him  to  set  our  good  Quincunx  upon  his  feet  forever,  and 
Lacrima  with  him!  It  is  the  kind  of  thing  it  would 
naturally  occur  to  him  to  do.  It  would  be  a  revenge; 
but  a  noble  revenge.  He  would  leave  Nevilton  then, 
feeling  that  he  had  left  his  mark;  that  he  had  made 
himself  felt.     Americans  like  to  make  themselves  felt." 

Luke's  countenance,  in  spite  of  his  interior  ac- 
quiescence, stiffened  into  a  haggard  mask  of  dismay. 

"  But  this  is  beyond  anything  one  has  ever  heard  of ! " 
he  protested,  trying  in  vain  to  assume  an  air  of  levity.  "It 
is  beyond  everything.  Actually  to  convey,  to  the  very 
man  one's  girl  is  going  to  marry,  the  news  of  her  seduc- 
tion! Actually  to  'coin  her  for  drachmas,'  as  it  says 
somewhere!  It's  a  monstrous  thing,  an  incredible 
thing!" 

"Not  a  bit  more  monstrous  than  your  original  sin 
in  seducing  the  girl,"  said  Mr.  Taxater. 


SAGITTARIUS  453 


"That  is  the  usual  trick,"  he  went  on  sternly,  "of 
you  English  people!  You  snatch  at  your  little  pleas- 
ures, without  any  scruple,  and  feel  yourselves  quite 
honourable.  And  then,  directly  it  becomes  a  question 
of  paying  for  them,  by  any  form  of  public  con- 
fession, you  become  fastidiously  scrupulous." 

"But  to  give  one's  girl  away,  to  betray  her  in  this 
shameless  manner  oneself!  It  seems  to  me  the  ulti- 
mate limit  of  scurvy  meanness!" 

"It  only  seems  to  you  so,  because  the  illusion  of 
chivalry  enters  into  it;  in  other  words,  because  pub- 
lic opinion  would  condemn  you!  This  honourable 
shielding  of  the  woman  we  have  sinned  with,  at 
every  kind  of  cost  to  others,  has  been  the  cause  of 
endless  misery.  Do  you  think  you  are  preparing  a 
happy  marriage  for  your  Gladys  in  your  'honourable' 
reticence?  By  saving  her  from  this  union  with  Mr. 
Dangelis  —  whom,  by  the  way,  she  surely  cannot  love, 
if  she  loves  you  —  you  will  be  doing  her  the  best  service 
possible.  Even  if  she  refuses  to  make  you  her  husband 
in  his  place  —  and  I  suppose  her  infatuation  would 
stop  at  that!  —  there  are  other  ways,  besides  marriage, 
of  hiding  her  embarrassed  condition.  Let  her  travel 
for  a  year  till  her  trouble  is  well  over!" 

Luke  Andersen  reflected  in  silence,  his  drooping  figure 
indicating  a  striking  collapse  of  his  normal  urbanity. 

At  last  he  spoke.  "There  may  be  something  in 
what  you  suggest,"  he  remarked  slowly.  "Obviously, 
/  can't  be  the  one,"  he  added,  after  a  further  pause, 
"to  strike  this  astounding  bargain  with  the  Ameri- 
can." 

"I  don't  see  why  not,"  said  the  theologian,  with 
a  certain  maliciousness  in  his  tone,  "I  don't  see  why 


454  WOOD  AND   STONE 

not.  You  have  been  the  one  to  commit  the  sin; 
you  ought  naturally  to  be  the  one  to  perform  the 
penance." 

The  luckless  youth  distorted  his  countenance  into 
such  a  wry  grimace,  that  he  caused  it  to  resemble 
the  stone  gargoyles  which  protruded  their  lewd 
tongues  from  the  church  roof  above  them. 

"It's  a  scurvy  thing  to  do,  all  the  same,"  he 
muttered. 

"It  is  only  relatively  —  'scurvy,'  as  you  call  it," 
replied  Mr.  Taxater.  "  In  an  absolute  sense,  the 
'scurviness'  would  be  to  let  your  Gladys  deceive 
an  honest  man  and  make  herself  unhappy  for  life, 
simply  to  save  you  two  from  any  sort  of  exposure. 
But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  I  am  not  inclined  to  place 
this  very  delicate  piece  of  negotiation  in  your  hands. 
It  would  be  so  fatally  easy  for  you  —  under  the  cir- 
cumstances —  to  make  some  precipitate  blunder  that 
would  spoil  it  all." 

"Don't  think,"  he  went  on,  observing  the  face  of  his 
interlocutor  relapsing  into  sudden  cheerfulness,  "that  I 
let  you  off  this  penance  because  of  its  unchivalrous 
character.  You  break  the  laws  of  chivalry  quite  as  com- 
pletely by  putting  me  into  the  possession  of  the  facts. 

"I  shall,  of  course,"  he  added,  "require  from  you 
some  kind  of  written  statement.  The  thing  must  be 
put  upon  an  unimpeachable  ground." 

Luke  Andersen's  relief  was  not  materially  modi- 
fied by  this  demand.  He  began  to  fumble  in  his 
pocket  for  his  cigarette-case. 

"The  great  point  to  be  certain  of,"  continued 
Mr.  Taxater,  "is  that  Quincunx  and  Lacrima  will 
accept   the   situation,    when   it   is   thus   presented   to 


SAGITTARIUS  455 

them.  But  I  don't  think  we  need  anticipate  any 
difficulty.  In  case  of  Dangelis'  saying  anything  to 
Mr.  Romer,  though  I  do  not  for  a  moment  imagine 
he  will,  it  would  be  well  if  you  and  your  brother 
were  prepared  to  move,  if  need  were,  to  some  other 
scene  of  action.  There  is  plenty  of  demand  for  skilled 
workmen  like  yourselves,  and  you  have  no  ties  here." 

The  young  man  made  a  deprecatory  movement 
with  his  hands. 

"We  neither  of  us  should  like  that,  very  much, 
sir.  James  and  I  are  fonder  of  Nevilton  than  you 
might  imagine." 

"Well,  well,"  responded  the  theologian,  "we  can 
discuss  that  another  time.  Such  a  thing  may  not  be 
necessary.  I  am  glad  to  see,  my  friend,"  he  added, 
"that  whatever  wrong  you  have  done,  you  are  willing 
to  atone  for  it.  So  I  trust  our  little  plan  will  work 
out  successfully.  Perhaps  you  will  look  in,  tomorrow 
night  .^  I  shall  be  at  leisure  then,  and  we  can  make 
our  arrangements.  Well,  Heaven  protect  you,  'a  sagitta 
volante  in  die,  a  negotio  perambulante  in  tenebris.'  " 

He  crossed  himself  devoutly  as  he  spoke,  and  giving 
the  young  man  a  friendly  wave  of  the  hand,  and 
an  encouraging  smile,  let  himself  out  through  the 
gate  and  proceeded  to  follow  the  patient  Vennie. 

He  overtook  his  little  friend  somewhere  not  far 
from  the  lodge  of  that  admirable  captain,  whose 
neatly-cut  laurel  hedge  had  witnessed,  according  to 
the  loquacious  Mrs.  Fringe,  the  strange  encounter 
between  Jimmy  Pringle  and  his  Maker.  Vennie 
was  straying  slowly  along  by  the  hedge-side,  trailing 
her  hand  through  the  tall  dead  grasses.  Hearing  Mr. 
Taxater's  footsteps,  she  turned  eagerly  to  meet  him. 


456  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"Well,"  she  asked,  "what  does  Luke  say  about  his 
brother?     Is  it  as  bad  as  we  feared?" 

"He  doesn't  think,"  responded  the  theologian, 
"any  more  than  I  do,  that  the  thing  has  gone  further 
than  common  hallucination." 

"And  Lacrima  —  poor  little  Lacrimal  —  have  you 
decided  what  we  must  do  to  intervene  in  her  case?" 

"I  think  it  may  be  said,"  responded  the  scholar 
gravely,  "that  we  have  hit  upon  an  effective  way  of 
stopping  that  marriage.  But  perhaps  it  would  be 
pleasanter  and  easier  for  you  to  remain  at  present 
in  ignorance  of  our  precise  plan.  I  know,"  he  added, 
smiling,  "you  do  not  care  for  hidden  conspiracies." 

Vennie  frowned.  "I  don't  see  why,"  she  said, 
"there  should  be  anything  hidden  about  it!  It  seems 
to  me,  the  thing  is  so  abominable,  that  one  would 
only  have  to  make  it  public,  to  put  an  end  to  it 
completely. 

"I  hope"  —  she  clasped  her  hands — '"I  do  hope, 
you  are  not  fighting  the  evil  one  with  the  weapons 
of  the  evil  one?  If  you  are,  I  am  sure  it  will  end 
unhappily.     I  am  sure  and  certain  of  it!" 

She  spoke  with  a  fervour  that  seemed  almost 
prophetic;  and  as  she  did  so,  she  unconsciously 
waved  —  with  a  pathetic  little  gesture  of  protest  — 
the  bunch  of  dead  grasses  which  she  held  in  her  hand. 

Mr.  Taxater  walked  gravely  by  her  side;  his  pro- 
file, in  its  imperturbable  immobility,  resembling  the 
mask  of  some  great  mediaeval  ecclesiastic.  The  only 
reply  he  made  to  her  appeal  was  to  quote  the  famous 
Psalmodic  invocation:  ''Nisi  Dominus  oBdificaverit  do- 
mum,  in  vanum  lahoraverunt  qui  aedificant  earn." 

It  would  have  been  clear  to  anyone  who  had  over- 


SAGITTARIUS  457 

heard  his  recent  conversation  with  Luke,  and  now 
watched  his  reception  of  Vcnnie's  instinctive  protest, 
that  whatever  the  actions  of  this  remarkable  man 
were,  they  rested  upon  a  massive  foundation  of  un- 
shakable philosophy. 

There  was  little  further  conversation  between 
them;  and  at  the  vicarage  gate,  they  separated  with 
a  certain  air  of  estrangement.  With  undeviating 
feminine  clairvoyance,  Vennie  was  persuaded  in  the 
depths  of  her  mind  that  whatever  plan  had  been  hit 
upon  by  the  combined  wits  of  the  theologian  and 
Luke,  it  was  one  whose  nature,  had  she  known  it, 
would  have  aroused  her  most  vehement  condemnation. 
Nor  in  this  persuasion  will  the  reader  of  our  curious 
narrative  regard  her  as  far  astray  from  the  truth. 

Meanwhile  the  two  brothers  were  also  returning 
slowly  along  the  road  to  Nevilton.  Had  Mr.  Claver- 
ing,  whose  opinion  of  the  younger  stone-carver  was 
probably  lower  than  that  of  any  of  his  other  critics, 
seen  Luke  during  this  time,  he  might  have  formed  a 
kindlier  judgment  of  him.  Nothing  could  have 
exceeded  the  tact  and  solicitude  with  which  he 
guided  the  conversation  into  safe  channels.  Nothing 
could  have  surpassed,  in  affectionate  tenderness,  the 
quick,  anxious  glances  he  every  now  and  then  cast 
upon  his  brother.  There  are  certain  human  expres- 
sions which  flit  suddenly  across  the  faces  of  men  and 
women,  which  reveal,  with  the  seal  of  absolute  au- 
thenticity, the  depth  of  the  emotion  they  betray. 
Such  a  flitting  expression,  of  a  love  almost  maternal 
in  its  passionate  depth,  crossed  the  face  of  Luke 
Andersen  at  more  than  one  stage  of  their  homew^ard 
walk. 


458  WOOD  AND   STONE 

James  seemed,  on  the  whole,  rather  better  than 
earlier  in  the  day.  The  most  ominous  thing  he  did 
was  to  begin  a  long  incoherent  discourse  about  the 
rooks  which  kept  circling  over  their  heads  on  their 
way  to  the  tall  trees  of  Wild  Pine.  But  this  particu- 
lar event  of  the  rooks'  return  to  their  Nevilton  roost- 
ing-place  was  a  phase  of  the  local  life  of  that  spot 
calculated  to  impress  even  perfectly  sane  minds 
with  romantic  suggestion.  It  was  always  a  sign  of 
the  breaking  up  of  the  year's  pristine  bloom  when 
they  came,  a  token  of  the  not  distant  approach  of 
the  shorter  equinoctial  days.  They  flew  hither,  these 
funereal  wayfarers,  from  far  distant  feeding-grounds. 
They  did  not  nest  in  the  Nevilton  woods.  Nevilton 
was  to  them  simply  a  habitation  of  sleep.  Many  of 
them  never  even  saw  it,  except  in  its  morning  and 
evening  twilight.  The  place  drew  them  to  it  at  night- 
fall, and  rejected  them  at  sunrise.  In  the  interval 
they  remained  passive  and  unconscious  —  huddled 
groups  of  black  obscure  shapes,  tossed  to  and  fro  in 
their  high  branches,  their  glossy  heads  full  of  dreams 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  profoundest  sage.  Before 
settling  down  to  rest,  however,  it  was  their  custom, 
even  on  the  stormiest  evenings,  to  sweep  round, 
above  the  roofs  of  the  village,  in  wide  airy  circles  of 
restless  flight,  uttering  their  harsh  familiar  cries. 
Sailing  quietly  on  a  peaceful  air  or  roughly  buffeted 
by  rainy  gusts  of  wind  —  those  westerly  winds  that 
are  so  wild  and  intermittent  in  this  corner  of  England 
—  these  black  tribes  of  the  twilight  give  a  character 
to  their  places  of  favourite  resort  which  resembles 
nothing  else  in  the  world.  The  cawing  of  rooks  is 
like  the  crying  of  sea-gulls.     It  is  a  sound  that  more 


SAGITTARIUS  459 

than    anything    flings    the    minds    of    men    back    to 
"old  unhappy  far-off  things." 

The  troubled  soul  of  the  luckless  stone-carver  went 
tossing  forth  on  this  particular  night  of  embalmed 
stillness,  driven  in  the  track  of  those  calmly  circling 
birds,  on  the  gust  of  a  thought-tempest  more  for- 
midable than  any  that  the  fall  of  the  leaves  could 
bring.  But  the  devoted  passion  of  the  younger 
brother  followed  patiently  every  flight  it  took;  and 
by  the  time  they  had  reached  the  vicarage-gate,  and 
turned  down  the  station-hill  towards  their  lodging, 
the  wild  thoughts  had  fallen  into  rest,  and  like  the 
birds  in  the  dusk  of  their  sheltering  branches,  were 
soothed  into  blessed  forgetfulness. 

Luke  had  recourse,  before  they  reached  their  dwel- 
ling, to  the  magic  of  old  memories;  and  the  end  of 
that  unforgettable  day  was  spent  by  the  two  brothers 
in  summoning  up  childish  recollections,  and  in  evoking 
the  images  and  associations  of  their  earliest  compacts 
of  friendship. 

When  he  left  his  brother  asleep  and  stood  for  a 
while  at  the  open  window,  Luke  prayed  a  vague 
heathen  prayer  to  the  planetary  spaces  above  his 
head.  A  falling  star  happened  to  sweep  downward 
at  that  moment  behind  the  dark  pyramid  of  Nevilton 
Mount,  and  this  natural  phenomenon  seemed  to  his 
excited  nerves  a  sort  of  elemental  answer  to  his  in- 
vocation; as  if  it  had  been  the  very  bolt  of  Sagit- 
tarius, the  Archer,  aimed  at  all  the  demons  that 
darkened  his  brother's  soul! 


CHAPTER    XVIII 

VOICES   BY  THE  WAY 

THE  morning  which  followed  James  Andersen's 
completion  of  his  work  in  Athelston  church- 
porch,  was  one  of  the  loveliest  of  the  season. 
The  sun  rose  into  a  perfectly  cloudless  sky.  Every 
vestige  of  mist  had  vanished,  and  the  half-cut  corn- 
fields lay  golden  and  unshadowed  in  the  translucent 
air.  Over  the  surface  of  every  upland  path,  the 
little  waves  of  palpable  ether  vibrated  and  quivered. 
The  white  roads  gleamed  between  their  tangled  hedges 
as  if  they  had  been  paved  with  mother-of-pearl.  The 
heat  was  neither  oppressive  nor  sultry.  It  penetrated 
without  burdening,  and  seemed  to  flow  forth  upon 
the  earth,  as  much  from  the  general  expanse  of  the 
blue  depths  as  from  the  limited  circle  of  the  solar 
luminary. 

James  Andersen  seemed  more  restored  than  his 
brother  had  dared  to  hope.  They  went  to  their 
work  as  usual;  and  from  the  manner  in  which  the 
elder  stone-carver  spoke  to  his  mates  and  handled 
his  tools,  none  would  have  guessed  at  the  mad  fan- 
cies which  had  so  possessed  him  during  the  previous 
days. 

Luke  was  filled  with  profound  happiness  and  relief. 
It  is  true  that,  like  a  tiny  cloud  upon  the  surface  of 
this  clear  horizon,  the  thought  of  his  projected  be- 
trayal   of    his    mistress    remained    present    with    him. 


VOICES  BY  THE  WAY  461 


But  in  the  depths  of  his  heart  he  knew  that  he  would 
have  betrayed  twenty  mistresses,  if  by  that  means 
the  brother  of  his  soul  could  be  restored  to  sanity. 

He  had  already  grown  completely  weary  of  Gladys. 
The  clinging  and  submissive  passion  with  which  the 
proud  girl  had  pursued  him  of  late  had  begun  to 
irritate  his  nerves.  More  than  once  —  especially 
when  her  importunities  interrupted  his  newer  pleas- 
ures— he  had  found  himself  on  the  point  of  hating 
her.  He  was  absolutely  cynical  —  and  always  had 
been  —  with  regard  to  the  ideal  of  faithfulness  in 
these  matters.  Even  the  startling  vision  of  the 
indignant  Dangelis  putting  into  her  hands  —  as  he 
supposed  the  American  might  naturally  do  —  the 
actual  written  words  with  which  he  betrayed  her, 
only  ruffled  his  equanimity  in  a  remote  and  even 
half-humorous  manner.  He  recalled  her  contemptu- 
ous treatment  of  him  on  the  occasion  of  their  first 
amorous  encounter  and  it  was  not  without  a  certain 
malicious  thrill  of  triumph  that  he  realized  how 
thoroughly  he  had  been  revenged. 

He  had  divined  without  difficulty  on  the  occasion 
of  their  return  from  Hullaway  that  Gladys  was  on 
the  point  of  revealing  to  him  the  fact  that  she  was 
likely  to  have  a  child;  and  since  that  day  he  had 
taken  care  to  give  her  little  opportunity  for  such 
revelations.  Absorbed  in  anxiety  for  James,  he 
had  been  anxious  to  postpone  this  particular  crisis 
between  them  till  a  later  occasion. 

The  situation,  nevertheless,  whenever  he  had 
thought  of  it,  had  given  him,  in  spite  of  its  com- 
plicated issues,  an  undeniable  throb  of  satisfaction. 
It  was  such  a  complete,  such  a  triumphant  victory. 


462  WOOD   AND   STONE 

over  Mr.  Romer.  Luke  in  his  heart  had  an  un- 
blushing admiration  for  the  quarry-owner,  whose 
masterly  attitude  towards  life  was  not  so  very  differ- 
ent from  his  own.  But  this  latent  respect  for  his 
employer  rather  increased  than  diminished  his  com- 
placency in  thus  striking  him  down.  The  remote 
idea  that,  in  the  whirligig  of  time,  an  offspring  of 
his  own  should  come  to  rule  in  Nevilton  house  —  as 
seemed  by  no  means  impossible,  if  matters  were 
discreetly  managed  —  was  an  idea  that  gave  him  a 
most  delicate  pleasure. 

As  they  strolled  back  to  breakfast  together,  across 
the  intervening  field,  and  admired  the  early  dahlias 
in  the  station-master's  garden,  Luke  took  the  risk 
of  testing  his  brother  on  the  matter  of  Mr.  Quincunx. 
He  was  anxious  to  be  quite  certain  of  his  ground 
here,  before  he  had  his  interview  with  the  tenant 
of  the  Gables. 

"I  wish,"  he  remarked  casually,  "that  Maurice 
Quincunx  would  show  a  little  spirit  and  carry  La- 
crima  off  straight  away." 

James  looked  closely  at  him.  "If  he  would,"  he 
said,  "I'd  give  him  every  penny  I  possess  and  I'd 
work  day  and  night  to  help  them!  O  Luke  —  Luke!" 
he  stretched  out  his  arm  towards  Leo's  Hill  and  pro- 
nounced what  seemed  like  a  vow  before  the  Eumen- 
ides  themselves;  "if  I  could  make  her  happy,  if  I 
could  only  make  her  happy,  I  would  be  buried  to- 
morrow in  the  deepest  of  those  pits." 

Luke  registered  his  own  little  resolution  in  the 
presence  of  this  appeal  to  the  gods.  "Gladys? 
What  is  Gladys  to  me  compared  with  James?  All 
girls  are  the  same.     They  all  get  over  these  things." 


VOICES  BY  THE  WAY  463 

Meanwhile    James    Andersen    was    repeating    in    a 
low  voice  to  himself  the  quaint  name  of  his  rival. 

"He  is  an  ash-root,  a  tough  ash-root,"  he  mut- 
tered. "And  that's  the  reason  he  has  been  chosen. 
There's  nothing  in  the  world  but  the  roots  of  trees 
that  can  undermine  the  power  of  Stone!  The  trees 
can  do  it.  The  trees  will  do  it.  What  did  that 
Catholic  say?  He  said  it  was  Wood  against  Stone. 
That's  the  reason  I  can't  help  her.  I  have  worked 
too  long  at  Stone.  I  am  too  near  Stone.  That's 
the  reason  Quincunx  has  been  chosen.  She  and  I 
are  under  the  power  of  Stone,  and  we  can't  resist  it, 
any  more  than  the  earth  can!  But  ash- tree  roots 
can  undermine  anything.  If  only  she  would  take 
my   money,  if  only  she  would." 

This  last  aspiration  was  uttered  in  a  voice  loud 
enough  for  Luke  to  hear;  and  it  may  be  well  believed 
that  it  fortified  him  all  the  more  strongly  in  his 
dishonourable  resolution. 

During  breakfast  James  continued  to  show  signs 
of  improvement.  He  talked  of  his  mother,  and 
though  his  conversation  was  sprinkled  with  some- 
what fantastic  imagery,  on  the  whole  it  was  rational 
enough. 

While  the  meal  was  still  in  progress,  the  younger 
brother  observed  through  the  window  the  figure  of 
a  woman,  moving  oddly  backwards  and  forwards 
along  their  garden-hedge,  as  if  anxious  at  the  same 
time  to  attract  and  avoid  attention.  He  recognized 
her  in  a  moment  as  the  notorious  waif  of  the  neigh- 
borhood, the  somewhat  sinister  Witch-Bessie.  He 
made  an  excuse  to  his  brother  and  slipped  out  to 
speak  to  her. 


464  WOOD  AND   STONE 

Witch-Bessie  had  grown,  if  possible,  still  more 
dehumanized  since  when  two  months  ago  she  had 
cursed  Gladys  Romer.  Her  skin  was  pallid  and 
livid  as  parchment.  The  eyes  which  stared  forth 
from  her  wrinkled  expressionless  face  were  of  a  dull 
glaucous  blue,  like  the  inside  of  certain  sun-bleached 
sea-shells.  She  was  dressed  in  a  rough  sack-cloth 
petticoat,  out  of  which  protruded  her  stockingless 
feet,  only  half  concealed  by  heavy  labourer's  boots, 
unlaced  and  in  large  holes.  Over  her  thin  shoulders 
she  wore  a  ragged  woolen  shawl  which  served  the  office 
not  only  of  a  garment,  but  also  of  a  wallet;  for,  in 
the  folds  of  it,  were  even  now  observable  certain 
half-eaten  pieces  of  bread,  and  bits  of  ancient  cheese, 
which  she  had  begged  in  her  wanderings.  In  one  of 
her  withered  hands  she  held  a  large  bunch  of  magen- 
ta-coloured, nettle-like  flowers,  of  the  particular  species 
known  to  botanists  as  marsh-wound-wort.  As  soon 
as  Luke  appeared  she  thrust  these  flowers  into  his 
arms. 

"Gathered  'un  for  'ee,"  she  whispered,  in  a  thin 
whistling  voice,  like  the  soughing  of  wind  in  a  bed 
of  rushes.  "They  be  capital  weeds  for  them  as  be 
moon-smitten.  Gathered  'un,  up  by  Seven  Ashes, 
where  them  girt  main  roads  do  cross.  Take  'un, 
mister;  take  'un  and  thank  an  old  woman  wot  loves 
both  of  'ee,  as  heretofore  she  did  love  your  long- 
sufFerin'  mother.  I  were  bidin'  down  by  Minister's 
back  gate,  expectin'  me  bit  of  oddments,  when  they 
did  tell  I,  all  sudden-like,  as  how  he'd  been  taken, 
same  as  she  was." 

"It's  most  kind  of  you,  Bessie,"  said  Luke  gra- 
ciously.    "You  and  I  have  always  been  good  friends." 


VOICES  BY  THE  WAY  465 


The  old  woman  nodded.  "So  we  be,  mister,  and 
let  none  say  the  contrary!  I've  a  dangled  'ee,  afore- 
now,  in  these  very  arms.  Dost  mind  how  'ee  drove 
that  ramping  girt  dog  out  of  Long-Load  Barton  when 
the  blarsted  thing  were  for  laying  hold  of  I.''" 

"But  what  must  I  do  with  these?"  asked  the 
stone-carver,  holding  the  bunch  of  pungent  scented 
flowers   to   his   face. 

"That's  wot  I  was  just  a-going  to  tell  'ee,"  whis- 
pered the  old  woman  solemnly.  "I  suppose  he's 
in  there  now,  eh?  Let  'un  be,  poor  man.  Let  'un 
be.  May-be  the  Lord's  only  waitin'  for  these  'ere 
weeds  to  mend  'is  poor  swimey  wits.  You  do  as  I 
do  tell  'ee,  mister,  and  'twill  be  all  smoothed  out, 
as  clean  as  church  floor.  You  take  these  blessed 
weeds,  — '  viviny-lobs '  my  old  mother  did  call  'em  — 
and  hang  'em  to  dry  till  they  be  dead  and  brown. 
Then  doddy  a  sprinkle  o'  good  salt  on  'em,  and  dip 
'em  in  clear  water.  Be  you  followin'  me,  mister 
Luke?" 

The  young  man  nodded. 

"Then  wot  you  got  to  do,  is  for  to  strike  'em 
'against  door-post,  and  as  you  strikes  'em,  you  says, 
same  as  I  says  now."  And  Witch-Bessie  repeated 
the    following    archaic    enchantment. 

Marshy  hollow  woundy-wort, 
Growing  on  the  holy  dirt. 
In  the  Mount  of  Calvary 
There  was  thou  found. 
In  the  name  of  sweet  Jesus 
I  take  thee  from  the  ground. 
O  Lord,  effect  the  same, 
That  I  do  now  go  about. 


466  WOOD   AND   STONE 

Luke  listened  devoutly  to  these  mysterious  words, 
and  repeated  them  twice,  after  the  old  woman. 
Their  two  figures,  thus  concerted  in  magical  tutelage, 
might,  for  all  the  youth's  modern  attire,  have  sug- 
gested to  a  scholarly  observer  some  fantastic  heathen 
scene  out  of  Apuleius.  The  spacious  August  sun- 
shine lay  splendid  upon  the  fields  about  them,  and 
light-winged  swallows  skimmed  the  surface  of  the 
glittering  railway-line  as  though  it  had  been  a  flow- 
ing river. 

When  she  was  made  assured  in  her  mind  that  her 
pupil  fully  understood  the  healing  incantation,  Witch- 
Bessie  shuffled  off  without  further  words.  Her 
face,  as  she  resumed  her  march  in  the  direction  of 
Hullaway,  relapsed  into  such  corpse-like  rigidity, 
that,  but  for  her  mechanical  movement,  one  might 
have  expected  the  shameless  flocks  of  starlings  who 
hovered  about  her,  to  settle  without  apprehension 
upon  her  head. 

The  two  brothers  labored  harmoniously  side  by 
side  in  their  work-shop  all  that  forenoon.  It  was 
Saturday,  and  their  companions  were  anxious  to 
throw  down  their  tools  and  clear  out  of  the  place  on 
the  very  stroke  of  the  one  o'clock  bell. 

James  and  Luke  were  both  engaged  upon  a  new 
stone  font,  the  former  meticulously  chipping  out  its 
angle-mouldings,  and  the  latter  rounding,  with  chisel 
and  file,  the  capacious  lip  of  its  deep  basin.  It  was 
a  cathedral  font,  intended  for  use  in  a  large  northern 
city. 

Luke  could  not  resist  commenting  to  his  brother, 
in  his  half-humorous  half-sentimental  way,  upon  the 
queer  fact  that  they  two  —  their  heads  full  of  their 


VOICES  BY  THE  WAY  467 

own  anxieties  and  troubles  —  should  be  thus  working 
upon  a  sacred  font  which  for  countless  generations, 
perhaps  as  long  as  Christianity  lasted,  would  be  asso- 
ciated with  so  many  strange  and  mingled  feelings  of 
perturbation  and  hope. 

"It's  a  comical  idea,"  he  found  himself  saying, 
though  the  allusion  was  sufficiently  unwise,  "this 
idea  of  Gladys'  baptism." 

He  regretted  his  words  the  moment  they  were  out 
of  his  mouth;    but  James  received  them  calmly. 

"I  once  heard,"  he  answered,  "I  think  it  was  on 
the  sands  at  Weymouth,  two  old  men  discussing 
quite  reverently  and  gravely  whether  an  infant, 
baptized  before  it  was  born,  would  be  brought  under 
the  blessing  of  the  Church.  I  thought,  as  I  listened 
to  them,  how  vulgar  and  gross-minded  our  age  had 
become,  that  I  should  have  to  tremble  with  alarm 
lest  any  flippant  passer-by  should  hear  their  curious 
speculation.  It  seemed  to  me  a  much  more  impor- 
tant matter  to  discuss,  than  the  merits  of  the  black- 
faced  Pierrots  who  were  fooling  and  howling  just 
beyond.  This  sort  of  seriousness,  in  regard  to  the 
strange  borderland  of  the  Faith,  has  always  seemed 
to  me  a  sign  of  pathetic  piety,  and  the  very  reverse 
of  anything  blasphemous." 

Luke  had  made  an  involuntary  movement  when 
his  brother's  anecdote  commenced.  The  calmness 
and  reasonableness  with  which  James  had  spoken 
was  balm  and  honey  to  the  anxious  youth;  but  he 
could  not  help  speculating  in  his  heart  whether  his 
brother  was  covertly  girding  at  him.  Did  he,  he 
wondered,  realize  how  far  things  had  gone  between 
him  and  the  fair-haired  girl.'' 


468  WOOD   AND   STONE 

"It's  the  sort  of  question,  at  any  rate,"  he  remarked 
rather  feebly,  "that  would  interest  our  friend  Sir 
Thomas  Browne.  Do  you  remember  how  we  read 
together  that  amazing  passage  in  the  Urn  Burial?" 

'"But  the  iniquity  of  oblivion,'"  quoted  James  in 
answer,  "'blindly  scattereth  her  Poppy,  and  deals 
with  the  memory  of  men  without  distinction  to  merit 
of  perpetuity.  Who  can  but  pity  the  founder  of  the 
Pyramids?  Herostratus  lives  that  burnt  the  temple 
of  Diana;  he  is  almost  lost  that  built  it.  Time  has 
spared  the  epitaph  of  Hadrian's  Horse,  confounded 
that  of  himself.  In  vain  we  compute  our  felicities  by 
the  advantage  of  our  good  names,  since  bad  have 
equal  durations;  and  Thersites  is  like  to  live  as  long 
as  Agamemnon  without  the  favour  of  the  everlasting 
register.  .  .  .  Darkness  and  light  divide  the  course  of 
time,  and  oblivion  shares  with  memory  a  great  part 
even  of  our  living  beings;  we  slightly  remember  our 
felicities  and  the  smartest  strokes  of  affliction  leave 
but  short  smart  upon  us.  To  weep  into  Stones  are 
fables.'" 

He  pronounced  these  last  words  with  a  slow  and 
emphatic  intonation. 

"Fables?"  he  repeated,  resting  his  hand  upon  the 
rim  of  the  font,  and  lowering  his  voice,  so  as  not  to 
be  heard  by  the  men  outside.  "He  calls  them  fables 
because  he  has  never  worked  as  we  do  —  day  in  and 
day  out  —  among  nothing  else.  The  reason  he  says 
that  to  weep  into  Stones  are  fables  is  that  his  own 
life,  down  at  that  pleasant  Norwich,  was  such  a 
happy  one.  To  weep  into  Stones!  He  means,  of 
course,  that  when  you  have  endured  more  than  you 
can  bear,  you  become  a  Stone.     But  that  is  no  fable! 


VOICES   BY  THE  WAY  469 

Or  if  it  was  once,  it  isn't  so  today.  Mr.  Taxater  said 
the  Stone-Age  was  over.  In  my  opinion,  Luke,  the 
Stone-Age  is  only  now  beginning.  The  reason  of 
that  is,  that  whereas,  in  former  times.  Stone  was 
moulded  by  men;  now,  men  are  moulded  by  Stone. 
We  have  receded,  instead  of  advancing;  and  the 
iniquity  of  Time  which  turned  animals  into  men,  is 
now  turning  men  back  into  the  elements!" 

Luke  cursed  bitterly  in  his  heart  the  rhythmic  in- 
cantations of  the  old  Norwich  doctor.  He  had  been 
thinking  of  a  very  different  passage  from  that  which 
his  brother  recalled.  To  change  the  conversation  he 
asked  how  James  wished  to  spend  their  free  afternoon. 

Andersen's  tone  changed  in  a  moment,  and  he 
grew  rational  and  direct.  "I  am  going  for  a  walk," 
he  said,  "and  I  think  perhaps,  if  you  don't  mind, 
I'll  go  alone.  My  brain  feels  clouded  and  oppressed. 
A  long  walk  ought  to  clear  it.  I  think  it  will  clear 
it;  don't  you.''"  This  final  question  was  added 
rather  wistfully. 

"I'm  sure  it  will.  Oh,  it  certainly  will!  I  expect 
the  sun  has  hit  you  a  bit;  or  perhaps,  as  Mr.  Taxater 
would  say,  your  headache  is  a  relative  one,  due  to 
my  dragging  in  such  things  as  Urn  Burial.  But  I 
don't  quite  like  your  going  alone,  Daddy  James." 

The  elder  brother  smiled  affectionately  at  him,  but 
went  on  quietly  with  his  work  without  replying. 

When  they  had  finished  their  mid-day  meal  they 
both  loitered  out  into  the  field  together,  smoking  and 
chatting.  The  afternoon  promised  to  be  as  clear  and 
beautiful  as  the  morning,  and  Luke's  spirits  rose  high. 
He  hoped  his  brother,  at  the  last  moment,  would  not 
have  the  heart  to  reject  his  company. 


470  WOOD   AND   STONE 

The  fineness  of  the  weather,  combined  with  the 
Saturday  half-holiday,  was  attracting  abroad  all 
manner  of  Nevilton  folk.  Lads  and  maids,  in  merry 
noisy  groups,  passed  and  repassed.  The  platform  of 
the  little  station  was  crowded  with  expectant  pas- 
sengers waiting  for  the  train  to  Yeoborough. 

As  the  brothers  stood  together,  carelessly  turning 
over  with  their  sticks  the  fetid  heads  of  a  patch  of 
meadow  fungi,  they  observed  two  separate  couples 
issuing,  one  after  another,  from  the  little  swing-gate 
that  opened  on  the  level-crossing.  They  recognized 
both  couples  almost  simultaneously.  The  first  pair 
consisted  of  Annie  Bristow  and  Phyllis  Santon;  the 
second  of  Vennie  Seldom  and  Mr.  Clavering. 

The  two  girls  proceeded,  arm-in-arm,  up  the  sloping 
path  that  led  in  the  direction  of  Hullaway.  Vennie 
and  Mr.  Clavering  advanced  straight  towards  the 
brothers.  Luke  had  time  to  wonder  vaguely  whether 
this  conjunction  of  Vennie  and  her  Anglican  pastor 
had  any  connection  with  last  night's  happenings. 

He  was  too  closely  associated  with  that  Gargantuan 
gossip,  Mrs.  Fringe,  not  to  be  aware  that  for  many 
weeks  past  Miss  Seldom  and  the  young  clergyman  had 
studiously  avoided  one  another.  That  they  should 
now  be  walking  together,  indicated,  to  his  astute 
mind,  either  a  quarrel  between  the  young  lady  and 
Mr.  Taxater,  or  an  estrangement  between  the  vicar 
and  Gladys.  Luke  was  the  sort  of  philosopher  who 
takes  for  granted  that  in  all  these  situations  it  is  love 
for  love,  or  hate  for  hate,  which  propels  irresistibly 
the  human  mechanism  and  decides  the  most  trifling 
incidents. 

James   looked   angry   and   embarrassed   at   the   ap- 


VOICES  BY  THE  WAY  471 

pearance  of  the  pair;  but  they  were  too  close  upon 
them  for  any  escape  to  be  possible. 

"How  are  you  today,  Andersen?"  began  Mr. 
Clavering,  with  his  usual  well-meaning  but  indiscreet 
impulsiveness.  "Miss  Seldom  tells  me  she  was 
nervous  about  you  last  night.  She  was  afraid  you 
were  working  too  hard." 

Vennie  gave  him  a  quick  reproachful  glance,  and 
made  a  deprecatory  movement  with  her  hands.  "Are 
all  men,"  she  thought,  "either  without  scruple  or 
without  common-sense?" 

"I'm  glad  to  see  that  I  was  quite  mistaken,"  she 
hastened  to  add.  "You  don't  look  at  all  tired  today, 
Mr.  Andersen.  And  no  wonder,  with  such  a  perfectly 
lovely  afternoon!  And  how  are  you,  Mr.  Luke?  I 
haven't  been  down  to  see  how  that  Liverpool  font  is 
getting  on,  for  ever  so  long.  I  believe  you'll  end  by 
being  quite  as  famous  as  your  father." 

Luke  received  this  compliment  in  his  most  courtly 
manner.  He  was  always  particularly  anxious  to 
impress  persons  who  belonged  to  the  "real"  upper 
classes  with  his  social  sang-froid. 

He  was  at  this  precise  moment,  however,  a  little 
agitated  by  the  conduct  of  the  two  young  people  who 
had  just  passed  up  the  meadow.  Instead  of  disap- 
pearing into  the  lane  beyond,  they  continued  to  loiter 
at  the  gate,  and  finally,  after  an  interlude  of  audible 
laughter  and  lively  discussion,  they  proceeded  to 
stretch  themselves  upon  the  grass.  The  sight  of  two 
amiable  young  women,  both  so  extremely  well  known 
to  him,  and  both  in  evident  high  spirits,  thus  enjoying 
the  sunshine,  filled  our  faun-like  friend's  mind  with 
the   familiar    craving   for   frivolity.     He    caught    Mr. 


472  WOOD   AND   STONE 


Clavering's  glance  fixed  gravely  upon  him.  He  also, 
it  appeared,  was  not  oblivious  of  the  loitering  vil- 
lagers. 

"I  think  there  are  other  members  of  your  flock, 
sir,"  said  James  Andersen  to  the  young  vicar,  "who 
are  at  the  present  moment  more  in  need  of  your  help 
than  I  am.  What  I  need  at  this  moment  is  air  — 
air.  I  should  like  to  be  able  to  wander  over  the 
Quantocks  this  afternoon.  Or  better  still,  by  the 
edge  of  the  sea!  We  all  need  more  air  than  we  get 
here.  It  is  too  shut-in  here  —  too  shut-in  and  oppress- 
ive. There's  too  much  stone  about;  and  too  much 
clay.  Yes,  and  the  trees  grow  too  close  together. 
Do  you  know.  Miss  Seldom,  what  I  should  like  to  do.'' 
I  should  like  to  pull  down  all  the  houses  —  I  mean 
all  the  big  houses  —  and  cut  down  all  the  trees,  and 
then  perhaps  the  wind  would  be  free  to  blow.  It's 
wind  we  want  —  all  of  us  —  wind  and  air  to  clear 
our  brains!  Do  you  reaHze"  —  his  voice  once  more 
took  that  alarming  tone  of  confidential  secretiveness, 
which  had  struck  them  so  disagreeably  the  preceding 
evening;  —  "do  you  realize  that  there  are  evil  spirits 
abroad  in  Nevilton,  and  that  they  come  from  the  Hill 
over  there?"  He  pointed  towards  the  Leonian  escarp- 
ments which  could  be  plainly  seen  from  where  they 
stood,  slumbering  in  the  splendid  sunshine. 

"It  looks  more  like  a  sphinx  than  a  lion  today, 
doesn't  it.  Miss  Seldom?  Oh,  I  should  like  to  tear  it 
up,  bodily,  from  where  it  lies,  and  fling  it  into  the 
sea!  It  blocks  the  horizon.  It  blocks  the  path  of 
the  west-wind.  I  tell  you  it  is  the  burden  that 
weighs  upon  us  all!  But  I  shall  conquer  it  yet; 
I  shall  be  master  of  it  yet!"     He  was  silent  a  few 


VOICES  BY  THE  WAY  473 

seconds,  while  a  look  of  supreme  disappointment 
clouded  the  face  of  his  brother;  and  the  two  new- 
comers gazed  at  him  in  alarm. 

"I  must  start  at  once,"  he  exclaimed  abruptly. 
"I  must  get  far,  far  off.  It  is  air  I  need,  air  and  the 
west-wind!  No,"  he  cried  imperiously,  when  Luke 
made  a  movement,  as  if  to  take  leave  of  their  com- 
panions. "I  must  go  alone.  Alone!  That  is  what  I 
must  be  today:  alone  —  and  on  the  hills!" 

He  turned  impatiently  as  he  spoke;  and  without 
another  word  strode  off  towards  the  level-crossing. 

"Surely  you  will  not  let  him  go  like  that,  Mr. 
Andersen?"  cried  Vennie,  in  great  distress. 

"It  would  do  no  good,"  replied  Luke,  watching  his 
brother  pass  through  the  gate  and  cross  the  track. 
"I  should  only  make  him  much  worse  if  I  tried  to 
follow  him.  Besides,  he  wouldn't  let  me.  I  don't 
think  he'll  come  to  any  harm.  I  should  have  a 
different  instinct  about  it  if  there  were  real  danger. 
Perhaps,  as  he  says,  a  good  long  walk  may  really  clear 
his  brain." 

"I  do  pray  your  instinct  is  to  be  relied  on,"  said 
Vennie,  anxiously  watching  the  tall  figure  of  the 
stone-carver,  as  he  ascended  the  vicarage  hill. 

"Well,  if  you're  not  going  to  do  your  duty,  Ander- 
sen, I'm  going  to  do  mine!"  exclaimed  the  vicar  of 
Nevilton,  setting  off,  without  further  parley,  in 
pursuit  of  the  fugitive. 

"Stop!  Mr.  Clavering,  I'll  come  wnth  you,"  cried 
Vennie.  And  she  followed  her  impulsive  friend 
towards  the  gate. 

As  they  ascended  the  hill  together,  keeping  Andersen 
in   sight,   Clavering   remarked  to   his  companion,  "I 


474  AYOOD   AND   STONE 

believe  that  dissolute  young  reprobate  refused  to 
look  after  his  brother  simply  because  he  wanted  to 
talk  to  those  two  girls." 

"What  two  girls?"  enquired  Vennie. 

"Didn't  you  see  them?"  muttered  the  clergyman 
crossly.  "The  Bristow  girl  and  little  Phyllis  Santon. 
They  were  hanging  about,  waiting  for  him." 

"I'm  sure  you  are  quite  wrong,"  replied  Vennie, 
"Luke  may  have  his  faults,  but  he  is  devoted  — 
madly  devoted  —  to  his  brother." 

"Not  at  all,"  cried  Clavering  almost  rudely.  "I 
know  the  man  better  than  you  do.  He  is  entirely 
selfish.  He  is  a  selfish,  sensual  pleasure-seeker!  He 
may  be  fond  of  his  brother  in  his  fashion,  just  because 
he  is  his  brother,  and  they  have  the  same  tastes;  but 
his  one  great  aim  is  his  own  pleasure.  He  has  been 
the  worst  influence  I  have  had  to  contend  with,  in 
this  whole  village,  for  some  time  back!" 

His  voice  trembled  with  rage  as  he  spoke.  It  was 
impossible,  even  for  the  guileless  Vennie,  not  to  help 
wondering  in  her  mind  whether  the  violence  of  her 
friend's  reprobation  was  not  impelled  by  an  emotion 
more  personal  than  public.  Her  unlucky  knowledge 
of  what  the  nature  of  such  an  emotion  might  be  did 
not  induce  her  to  yield  meekly  to  his  argument. 

"I  don't  believe  he  saw  the  people  you  speak  of 
any  more  than  I  did,"  she  said. 

"Saw  them?"  cried  the  priest  wrathfully,  quicken- 
ing his  pace,  as  Andersen  disappeared  round  the 
corner  of  the  road,  so  that  Vennie  had  to  trot  by  his 
side  like  a  submissive  child.  "I  saw  the  look  he 
fixed  on  them.  I  know  that  look  of  his!  I  tell  you 
he  is  the  kind  of  man  that  does  harm  wherever  he 


VOICES  BY  THE  WAY  475 

goes.  He's  a  lazy,  sensual,  young  scoundrel.  He 
ought  to  be  kicked  out  of  the  place." 

Vennie  sighed  deeply.  Life  in  the  world  of  men 
was  indeed  a  complicated  and  entangled  matter.  She 
had  turned,  in  her  agitation  about  the  stone-carver, 
and  in  her  reaction  from  Mr.  Taxater's  reserve, 
straight  to  the  person  she  loved  best  of  all;  and  this 
was  her  reward,  —  a  mere  crude  outburst  of  mascu- 
line jealousy! 

They  rounded  the  corner  by  her  own  gate,  where 
the  road  to  Athelston  deviates  at  right  angles.  James 
Andersen  was  no  longer  in  sight. 

"Where  the  devil  has  the  man  got  to?"  cried  the 
astonished  clergyman,  raging  at  himself  for  his  ill- 
temper,  and  raging  at  Vennie  for  having  been  the 
witness  of  it. 

The  girl  glanced  up  the  Athelston  road;  and  hasten- 
ing forward  a  few  paces,  scanned  the  stately  slope  of 
the  Nevilton  west  drive.  The  unfortunate  man  was 
nowhere  to  be  seen. 

From  where  they  now  stood,  the  whole  length  of 
the  village  street  was  visible,  almost  as  far  as  the 
Goat  and  Boy.  It  was  full  of  holiday-making 
young  people,  but  there  was  no  sign  of  Andersen's 
tall  and  unmistakable  figure. 

"Oh,  this  is  dreadful!"  cried  Vennie.  "What  are 
we  to  do?     Where  can  he  have  gone?" 

Hugh  Clavering  looked  angrily  round.  He  was 
experiencing  that  curious  sense,  which  comes  to  the 
best  of  men  sometimes,  of  being  the  special  and 
selected  object  of  providential  mockery. 

"There  are  only  two  ways,"  he  said.  "Either  he's 
slipped  down  through  the  orchards,  along  your  wall, 


476  WOOD  AND  STONE 

or  he's  made  off  to  Nevilton  Mount!  If  that's  what 
he's  done,  he  must  be  now  behind  that  hedge,  over 
there.     We  should  see  him  otherwise." 

Vennie  gazed  anxiously  in  the  direction  indicated. 
"He  can't  have  gone  into  our  garden.''"  she  said. 
"No,  he'd  never  do  that!  He  talked  about  air  and 
hills.     I  expect  he's  where  you  say.     Shall  we  go  on.''" 

They  hurried  down  the  road  until  they  reached  a 
gate,  on  the  further  side  of  the  hedge  which  ran  to 
the  base  of  Nevilton  Mount.  Here  they  entered  the 
field.  There  was  no  sign  of  the  fugitive;  but  owing  to 
certain  inequalities  in  the  ground,  and  the  interven- 
tion of  some  large  elm-trees,  it  was  still  quite  possible 
that  he  was  only  a  few  hundred  yards  in  front  of 
them.  They  followed  the  line  of  the  hedge  with  all 
the  haste  they  could;  trusting,  at  every  turn  it  made, 
that  they  would  discover  him.  In  this  manner  they 
very  soon  arrived  at  the  base  of  the  hill. 

"I  feel  sure  he's  somewhere  in  front  of  us!"  mut- 
tered Clavering.  "How  annoying  it  is!  It  was 
outrageous  of  that  young  scoundrel  to  let  him  go  like 
this;  —  wandering  about  the  country  in  that  mad 
state!  If  he  comes  to  any  harm,  I  shall  see  to  it  that 
that  young  man  is  held  responsible." 

"Quick!"  sighed  Vennie  breathlessly,  "we'd  better 
climb  straight  to  the  top.     We  must  find  him  there!" 

They  scrambled  over  the  bank  and  proceeded  to 
make  their  way  as  hurriedly  as  they  could  through 
the  entangled  undergrowth.  Hot  and  exhausted  they 
emerged  at  last  upon  the  level  summit.  Here,  the 
grotesque  little  tower  mocked  at  them  with  its  impas- 
sive grey  surface.  There  was  no  sign  of  the  man  they 
sought;  but  seated  on  the  grass  with  their  backs  to 


VOICES  BY  THE  WAY  477 

the  edifice  were  the  figures  of  the  complacent  Mr.  Wone 
and  one  of  his  younger  children,  engaged  in  the 
agreeable  occupation  of  devouring  a  water-melon. 
The  mouth  and  chin  of  the  Christian  Candidate  were 
bespattered  with  the  luscious  juice  of  this  delectable 
fruit,  and  laid  out  carefully  upon  a  magazine  on  his 
knees,  was  a  pleasing  arrangement  of  rind-peelings 
and  well-sucked  pips, 

Mr.  Wone  waved  his  hand  in  polite  acknowledg- 
ment of  Clavering's  salute.  He  removed  his  hat  to 
Vennie,  but  apologized  for  not  rising.  "Taking  a 
little  holiday,  you  observe!"  he  remarked  with  a 
satisfied  smile.  "I  see  you  also  are  inclined  to 
make  the  most  of  this  lovely  summer  day." 

"You  haven't  by  any  chance  seen  the  elder  Ander- 
sen, have  you?"  enquired  Clavering. 

"Not  a  bit  of  it,"  replied  the  recumbent  man.  "I 
suppose  I  cannot  offer  you  a  piece  of  melon,  Miss 
Seldom.?" 

The  two  baffled  pursuers  looked  at  one  another  in 
hopeless  disappointment. 

"We've  lost  him,"  muttered  the  priest.  "He  must 
have  gone  through  your  orchard  after  all." 

Mr.  Wone  did  not  miss  this  remark.  "You  w^ere 
looking  for  our  good  James?  No.  We  haven't  seen 
anything  of  him.  No  doubt  he  is  with  his  brother 
somewhere.  I  believe  they  usually  spend  their 
Saturdays  out  at  Hullaway." 

"When  does  the  election  come  off,  Mr.  Wone?" 
enquired  Vennie,  hastily,  extremely  unwilling  that  her 
tactless  companion  should  disclose  the  purpose  of 
their  search. 

"In  a  week's  time  from  next  Monday,"  replied  the 


478  WOOD   AND   STONE 

Candidate.  "This  will  be  my  last  free  day  till  then. 
I  have  to  make  thirty  speeches  during  the  next  seven 
days.  Our  cause  goes  well.  I  believe,  with  God's 
great  help,  we  are  practically  certain  of  victory.  It 
will  be  a  great  event,  Miss  Seldom,  a  great  event." 

Mr.  Clavering  made  a  hopeless  sign  to  Vennie, 
indicative  of  the  uselessness  of  any  further  steps  to 
retake  the  runaway. 

"I  think  your  side  will  win  in  the  country  gener- 
ally," he  remarked.  "As  to  this  district,  I  cannot 
tell.  Mr.  Roraer  has  strengthened  himself  consider- 
ably by  his  action  after  the  strike." 

The  candidate  placed  a  carefully  selected  piece  of 
fruit  in  his  mouth,  and  called  to  his  little  boy,  who 
was  scratching  his  initials  with  a  knife  upon  the  base 
of  the  tower. 

"He  will  be  beaten  all  the  same,"  he  said.  "He 
is  bound  to  be  beaten.  The  stars  in  their  courses 
must  fight  against  a  man  like  that.  I  feel  it  in  the 
air;  in  the  earth;  in  these  beautiful  trees.  I  feel  it 
everywhere.  He  has  challenged  stronger  powers  than 
you  or  me.  He  has  challenged  the  majesty  of  God 
Himself.  I'll  give  you  the  right"  —  he  went  on  in  a 
voice  that  mechanically  assumed  a  preacher's  tone  — 
"to  call  me  a  liar  and  a  false  prophet,  if  by  this  time, 
in  ten  days,  the  oppressor  of  the  poor  does  not  find 
himself  crushed  and  beaten!" 

"I  am  afraid  right  and  wrong  are  more  strangely 
mixed  in  this  world  than  all  that,  Mr.  Wone,"  Vennie 
found  herself  saying,  with  a  little  weary  glance  over 
the  wide  sun-bathed  valleys  extended  at  their  feet. 

"Pardon  me,  pardon  me,  young  lady,"  cried  the 
Candidate.     "In    this    great   cause   there   can   be   no 


VOICES  BY  THE  WAY  479 

doubt,  no  question,  no  ambiguity.  The  evolution  of 
the  human  race  has  reached  a  point  when  the  will  of 
God  must  reveal  itself  in  the  triumph  of  love  and 
liberty.  Nothing  else  matters.  All  turns  upon  this. 
That  is  why  I  feel  that  my  campaign  is  more  than  a 
political  struggle.  It  is  a  religious  struggle,  and  on 
our  side  are  the  great  moral  forces  that  uphold  the 
world!" 

Vennie's  exhausted  nerves  completely  broke  down 
upon  this. 

"Shall  we  go?"  she  said,  touching  her  companion 
on  the  sleeve. 

Clavering  nodded,  and  bade  the  melon-eater  "good 
afternoon,"  with  a  brusque  gesture. 

As  they  went  off,  he  turned  on  his  heel.  "The  will 
of  God,  Mr.  Wone,  is  only  to  be  found  in  the  obedient 
reception  of  His  sacraments." 

The  Christian  candidate  opened  his  mouth  with 
amazement.  "Those  young  people,"  he  thought  to 
himself,  "are  up  to  no  good.  They'll  end  by  becom- 
ing papists,  if  they  go  on  like  this.  Its  extraordinary 
that  the  human  mind  should  actually  prefer  slavery 
to  freedom!" 

Meanwhile  the  man  whose  mysterious  evasion  of 
his  pursuers  had  resulted  in  this  disconcerting  en- 
counter was  already  well-advanced  on  his  way 
towards  the  Wild  Pine  ridge.  He  had,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  crossed  the  field  between  the  west  drive  and 
the  Vicarage-garden,  and  skirting  the  orchards  below 
Nevilton  House,  had  plunged  into  the  park. 

A  vague  hope  of  meeting  Lacrima  —  an  instinctive 
rather  than  a  conscious  feeling  —  had  led  him  in  this 
direction.     Once  in  the  park,  the  high  opposing  ridge. 


480  WOOD   AND   STONE 

crowned  with  its  sentinel-line  of  tall  Scotch-firs, 
arrested  his  attention  and  drew  him  towards  it.  He 
crossed  the  Yeoborough  road  and  ascended  the  incline 
of  Dead  Man's  Lane. 

As  he  passed  the  cottage  of  his  rival,  he  observed 
Mr.  Quincunx  energetically  at  w^ork  in  his  garden. 
On  this  occasion  the  recluse  was  digging  up,  not  weeds, 
but  young  potatoes.  He  was  in  his  shirt-sleeves  and 
looked  hot  and  tired. 

Andersen  leaned  upon  the  little  gate  and  observed 
him  with  curious  interest.  "Why  isn't  she  here?" 
he  muttered  to  himself.  Then,  after  a  pause:  "He 
is  an  ash-root.  Let  him  drag  that  house  down! 
Why  doesn't  he  drag  it  down,  with  all  its  heavy 
stones?  And  the  Priory  too?  And  the  Church;  — 
yes;  and  the  Church  too!  He  burrows  like  a  root. 
He  looks  like  a  root.  I  must  tell  him  all  these  things. 
I  must  tell  him  why  he  has  been  chosen,  and  I  have 
been  rejected!"  He  opened  the  gate  forthwith  and 
advanced  towards  the  potato-digger. 

Mr.  Quincunx  might  have  struck  the  imagination 
of  a  much  less  troubled  spirit  than  that  of  the  poor 
stone-carver  as  having  a  resemblance  to  a  root.  His 
form  was  at  once  knotted  and  lean,  fibrous  and 
delicate.  His  face,  by  reason  of  his  stooping  position, 
was  suffused  with  a  rich  reddish  tint,  and  his  beard 
was  dusty  and  unkempt.  He  rose  hastily,  on  observ- 
ing his  visitor. 

"People  like  you  and  me,  James,  are  best  by  our- 
selves at  these  holiday-times,"  was  his  inhospitable 
greeting.  "You  can  help  me  with  my  potatoes  if  you 
like.  Or  you  can  tell  me  your  news  as  I  work.  Or 
do  you  want  to  ask  me  any  question?" 


VOICES   BY  THE   WAY  481 

He  uttered  these  final  words  in  such  a  tone  as  the 
Delphic  oracle  might  have  used,  when  addressing 
some  harassed  refugee. 

"Has  she  been  up  here  today?"  said  the  stone- 
carver. 

"I  like  the  way  you  talk,"  replied  the  other. 
"Why  should  we  mention  their  names.'*  When  I  say 
people,  I  mean  girls.  When  I  say  persons,  I  mean 
girls.  When  I  say  young  ladies,  I  mean  girls.  And 
when  you  say  'she'  you  mean  our  girl." 

"Yours!"  cried  the  demented  man;     "she  is  yours 

—  not  ours.     She  is  weighed  down  by  this  evil  Stone, 

—  weighed  down  into  the  deep  clay.     What  has  she 
to  do  with  me,  who  have  worked  at  the  thing  so  long?" 

Mr.  Quincunx  leant  upon  his  hoe  and  surveyed  the 
speaker.  It  occurred  to  him  at  once  that  something 
was  amiss.  "Good  Lord!"  he  thought  to  himself, 
"the  fellow  has  been  drinking.  I  must  get  him  out  of 
this  garden  as  quickly  as  possible." 

"She  loves  you,"  Andersen  went  on,  "because  you 
are  like  a  root.  You  go  deep  into  the  earth  and  no 
stone  can  resist  you.  You  twine  and  twine  and 
twine,  and  pull  them  all  down.  They  are  all  haunted 
places,  these  houses  and  churches;  all  haunted  and 
evil!  They  make  a  man's  head  ache  to  live  in  them. 
They  put  voices  into  a  man's  ears.  They  are  as  full 
of  voices  as  the  sea  is  full  of  waves." 

"You  are  right  there,  my  friend,"  replied  Mr. 
Quincunx.  "It's  only  what  I've  always  said.  Until 
people  give  up  building  great  houses  and  great 
churches,  no  one  will  ever  be  happy.  We  ought  to 
live  in  bushes  and  thickets,  or  in  tents.  My  cottage 
is  no  better  than  a  bush.     I  creep  into  it  at  night. 


482  WOOD   AND   STONE 

and  out  again  in  the  morning.  If  its  thatch  fell  on 
my  head  I  should  hardly  feel  it." 

"You  wouldn't  feel  it,  you  wouldn't!"  cried  the 
stone-carver.  "And  the  reason  of  that  is,  that  you 
can  burrow  like  a  root.  I  shouldn't  feel  it  either,  but 
for  a  different  reason." 

"I  expect  you'd  better  continue  your  walk,"  re- 
marked Mr.  Quincunx.  "I  never  fuss  myself  about 
people  who  come  to  see  me.  If  they  come,  they 
come.     And  when  they  go,  they  go." 

The  stone-carver  sighed  and  looked  round  him. 
The  sun  gleamed  graciously  upon  the  warm  earth, 
danced  and  sparkled  upon  the  windows  of  the  cottage, 
and  made  the  beads  of  sweat  on  Mr,  Quincunx's  brow 
shine  like  diamonds, 

"Do  you  think,"  he  said,  while  the  potato-digger 
turned  to  his  occupation,  "that  happiness  oi  unhappi- 
ness  predominates  in  this  world,''" 

"Unhappiness!"  cried  the  bearded  man,  glaring  at 
his  acquaintance  with  the  scowl  of  a  goblin,  "Un- 
happiness! Unhappiness!  Unhappiness!  That  is  why 
the  only  wise  way  to  live  is  to  avoid  everything. 
That's  what  I  always  do.  I  avoid  people,  I  avoid 
possessions,  I  avoid  quarrels,  I  avoid  lust,  and  I 
avoid  love!  My  life  consists  in  the  art  of  avoiding 
things." 

"She  doesn't  want  happiness,"  pleaded  the  obsessed 
stone-carver.  "And  her  love  is  enough.  She  only 
wants  to  escape." 

"Why  do  you  keep  bringing  Lacrima  in?"  cried 
the  recluse.  "She  is  going  to  marry  John  Goring, 
She  is  going  to  be  mistress  of  the  Priory," 

A  convulsive  shock  of  fury  flashed  across  the  face  of 


VOICES   BY  THE   WAY  483 

Andersen.  lie  made  a  movement  that  caused  his 
interlocutor  to  step  hurriedly  backwards.  But  the 
emotion  passed  as  rapidly  as  it  had  come. 

"You  would  avoid  everything,"  he  said  cunningly. 
"  You  would  avoid  everything  you  hate,  if  someone  — 
myself  for  instance  —  or  Luke  —  made  it  easy  for  you 
to  save  her  from  these  houses  and  these  churches! 
Luke  will  arrange  it.  He  is  not  like  us.  He  is  wise. 
He  knows  the  world.  And  you  will  only  have  to  go 
on  just  as  before,  to  burrow  and  twine!  But  you'll 
have  done  it.  You'll  have  saved  her  from  them. 
And  then  it  will  not  matter  how  deep  they  bury  me 
in  the  quarries  of  Leo's  Hill!" 

"Is  he  drunk.?*  Or  is  he  not  drunk?"  Mr  Quincunx 
wondered.  The  news  of  Andersen's  derangement, 
though  it  had  already  run  like  wild-fire  through  the 
village,  had  not  yet  reached  his  ears.  For  the  last 
few  days  he  had  walked  both  to  and  from  his  oflfice, 
and  had  talked  to  no  one. 

A  remarkable  peculiarity  in  this  curious  potato- 
digger  was,  however,  his  absolute  and  unvarying 
candour.  Mr.  Quincunx  was  prepared  to  discuss  his 
most  private  concerns  with  any  mortal  or  immortal 
visitor  who  stepped  into  his  garden.  He  would  have 
entered  into  a  calm  philosophical  debate  upon  his 
love-affairs  with  a  tramp,  with  a  sailor,  with  the  post- 
man, with  the  chimney-sweep,  with  the  devil;  or, 
as  in  this  case,  with  his  very  rival  in  his  sweetheart's 
affection!  There  was  really  something  touching  and 
sublime  about  this  tendency  of  his.  It  indicated  the 
presence,  in  Mr,  Quincunx,  of  a  certain  mystical 
reverence  for  simple  humanity,  which  completely 
contradicted  his  misanthropic  cynicism. 


484  ^YOOD  AND   STONE 

"Certainly,"  he  remarked,  on  this  occasion,  for- 
getting, in  his  interest  in  the  subject,  the  recent 
strange  outburst  of  his  companion.  "Certainly,  if 
Lacrima  and  I  had  sufficient  money  to  live  upon,  I 
would  be  inclined  to  risk  marrying.  You  would 
advise  me  to,  then;  wouldn't  you,  Andersen?  Anyone 
would  advise  me  to,  then.  It  would  be  absurd  not 
to  do  it.  Though,  all  the  same,  there  are  always 
great  risks  in  two  people  living  together,  particularly 
nervous  people,  —  such  as  we  are.  But  what  do  you 
think,  Andersen?  Suppose  some  fairy  god-mother  did 
give  us  this  money,  would  you  advise  us  to  risk  it? 
Of  course,  we  know,  girls  like  a  large  house  and  a  lot 
of  servants!  She  wouldn't  get  that  with  me,  because 
I  hate  those  things,  and  wouldn't  have  them,  even  if 
I  could  afford  it.  What  would  you  advise,  Andersen, 
if  some  mad  chance  did  make  such  a  thing  possible? 
Would  it  be  worth  the  risk?" 

An  additional  motive,  in  the  queerly  constituted 
mind  of  the  recluse,  for  making  this  extraordinary 
request,  was  the  Pariah-like  motive  of  wishing  to 
propitiate  the  stone-carver.  Parallel  with  his  humor- 
ous love  of  shocking  people,  ran,  through  Mr.  Quin- 
cunx's nature,  the  naive  and  innocent  wish  to  win 
them  over  to  his  side;  and  his  method  of  realizing  this 
wish  was  to  put  himself  completely  at  their  mercy, 
laying  his  meanest  thoughts  bare,  and  abandoning 
his  will  to  their  will,  so  that  for  very  shame  they 
could  not  find  it  in  them  to  injure  him,  but  were 
softened,  thrown  off  their  guard,  and  disarmed.  Mr. 
Quincunx  knew  no  restraint  in  these  confessions  by 
the  way,  in  these  appeals  to  the  voices  and  omens  of 
casual  encounter.     He  grew  voluble,  and  even  shame- 


VOICES  BY  THE  WAY  485 

less.  In  quiet  reaction  afterwards,  in  the  loneliness 
of  his  cottage,  he  was  often  led  to  regret  with  gloomy 
remorse  the  manner  in  which  he  had  betrayed  himself. 
It  was  then  that  he  found  himself  hating,  with  the 
long-brooding  hatred  of  a  true  solitary,  the  persons 
to  whom  he  had  exposed  the  recesses  of  his  soul.  At 
the  moment  of  communicativeness,  however,  he  was 
never  able  to  draw  rein  or  come  to  a  pause.  If  he 
grew  conscious  that  he  was  making  a  fool  of  himself, 
a  curious  demonic  impulse  in  him  only  pressed  him 
on  to  humiliate  himself  further. 

He  derived  a  queer  inverted  pleasure  from  thus 
offering  himself,  stripped  and  naked,  to  the  smiter. 
It  was  only  afterwards,  in  the  long  hours  of  his  loneli- 
ness, that  the  poison  of  his  outraged  pride  festered 
and  fermented,  and  a  deadly  malice  possessed  him 
towards  the  recipients  of  his  confidences.  There  was 
something  admirable  about  the  manner  in  which  this 
quaint  man  made,  out  of  his  very  lack  of  resistant 
power,  a  sort  of  sanctity  of  dependence.  But  this 
triumph  of  w'cakness  in  him,  this  dissolution  of  the 
very  citadel  of  his  being,  in  so  beautiful  and  mystical 
an  abandonment  to  the  sympathy  of  our  common 
humanity,  was  attended  by  lamentable  issues  in  its 
resultant  hatred  and  malice.  Had  Mr.  Quincunx 
been  able  to  give  himself  up  to  this  touching  candour 
without  these  melancholy  and  misanthropic  reactions, 
his  temper  would  have  been  very  nearly  the  temper 
of  a  saint;  but  the  gall  and  wormwood  of  the  hours 
that  followed,  the  corroding  energy  of  the  goblin  of 
malice  that  was  born  of  such  unnatural  humiliations, 
put  a  grievous  gulf  between  him  and  the  heavenly 
condition. 


486  WOOD   AND   STONE 

It  must  also  be  remembered,  in  qualification  of  the 
outrageousness,  one  might  almost  say  the  indecency, 
of  his  appeal  to  Andersen,  that  he  had  not  in  the 
remotest  degree  realized  the  extent  of  the  stone- 
carver's  infatuation  with  the  Italian.  Neither  physi- 
cal passion,  nor  ideal  passion,  were  things  that  entered 
into  his  view  of  the  relations  between  the  sexes. 
Desire  with  him  was  of  a  strange  and  complicated 
subtlety,  generally  diffused  into  a  mild  and  brooding 
sentiment.  He  was  abnormally  faithful,  but  at  the 
same  time  abnormally  cold;  and  though,  very  often, 
jealousy  bit  him  like  a  viper,  it  was  a  jealousy  of  the 
mind,  not  a  jealousy  of  the  senses. 

What  in  other  people  would  have  been  gross  and 
astounding  cynicism,  was  in  Mr.  Quincunx  a  perfectly 
simple  and  even  child-like  recognition  of  elemental 
facts.  He  could  sweep  aside  every  conventional 
mask  and  plunge  into  the  very  earth-mould  of  reality, 
but  he  was  quite  unconscious  of  any  shame,  or  any 
merit,  in  so  doing.  He  simply  envisaged  facts,  and 
stated  the  facts  he  envisaged,  without  the  conven- 
tional unction  of  worldly  discretion.  This  being  so, 
it  was  in  no  ironic  extravagance  that  he  appealed  to 
Andersen,  but  quite  innocently,  and  without  con- 
sciousness of  anything  unusual. 

Of  the  two  men,  some  might  have  supposed, 
considering  the  circumstances,  that  it  was  Mr.  Quin- 
cunx who  was  mad,  and  his  interlocutor  who  was 
sane.  On  the  other  hand,  it  might  be  said  that  only 
a  madman  would  have  received  the  recluse's  appeal 
in  the  calm  and  serious  manner  in  which  Andersen 
received  it.  The  abysmal  cunning  of  those  who  have 
only  one  object  in  life,  and  are  in  sight  of  its  attain- 


VOICES  BY  THE  WAY  487 

raent,  actuated  the  unfortunate  stone-carver  in  his 
attitude  to  his  rival  at  this  moment. 

"If  some  fairy  or  some  god,"  he  said,  "did  lift  the 
stone  from  her  sepulchre  and  you  from  your  sepulchre, 
my  advice  to  you  and  to  her  would  be  to  go  away, 
to  escape,  to  be  free.  You  would  be  happy — you 
would  both  be  happy!  And  the  reason  of  your 
happiness  would  be  that  you  would  know  the  Devil 
had  been  conquered.  And  you  would  know  that, 
because,  by  gathering  all  the  stones  in  the  world  upon 
my  own  head,  and  being  buried  beneath  them,  I 
should  have  made  a  rampart  higher  than  Leo's  Hill 
to  protect  you  from  the  Evil  One!" 

Andersen's  words  were  eager  and  hurried,  and  when 
he  had  finished  speaking,  he  surveyed  Mr.  Quincunx 
with  wild  and  feverish  eyes.  It  was  now  borne  in 
for  the  first  time  upon  that  worthy  philosopher,  that 
he  was  engaged  in  conversation  with  one  whose  wits 
were  turned,  and  a  great  terror  took  possession  of  him. 
If  the  cunning  of  madmen  is  deep  and  subtle,  it  is 
sometimes  surpassed  by  the  cunning  of  those  who  are 
afraid  of  madmen. 

"The  most  evil  heap  of  stones  I  know  in  Nevilton," 
remarked  Mr.  Quincunx,  moving  towards  his  gate, 
and  making  a  slight  dismissing  gesture  with  his  hand, 
"is  the  heap  in  the  Methodist  cemetery.  You  know 
the  one  I  mean,  Andersen?  The  one  up  by  Seven 
Ashes,  where  the  four  roads  meet.  It  is  just  inside 
the  entrance,  on  the  left  hand.  They  throw  upon  it 
all  the  larger  stones  they  find  when  they  dig  the 
graves.  I  have  often  picked  up  bits  of  bones  there, 
and  pieces  of  skulls.  It  is  an  interesting  place,  a 
very    curious    place,  and    quite  easy  to  find.     There 


488  WOOD  AND  STOXE 

haven't  been  many  burials  there  lately,  because  most 
of  the  Methodists  nowadays  prefer  the  churchyard. 
But  there  was  one  last  spring.  That  was  the  burial 
of  Glory  Lintot.  I  was  there  myself,  and  saw  her 
put  in.  It's  an  extraordinary  place.  Anyone  who 
likes  to  look  at  what  people  can  write  on  tombstones 
would  be  delighted  with  it." 

By  this  time,  by  means  of  a  series  of  vague  ushering 
movements,  such  as  he  might  have  used  to  get  rid  of 
an  admirable  but  dangerous  dog,  Mr.  Quincunx  had 
got  his  visitor  as  far  as  the  gate.  This  he  opened, 
with  as  easy  and  natural  an  air  as  he  could  assume, 
and  stood  ostentatiously  aside,  to  let  the  unfortunate 
man  pass  out. 

James  Andersen  moved  slowly  into  the  road. 
"Remember!"  he  said.  "You  will  avoid  everything 
you  hate!  There's  more  in  the  west- wind  than  you 
imagine,  these  strange  days.  That's  why  the  rooks 
are  calling.     Listen  to  them!" 

He  waved  his  hand  and  strode  rapidly  up  the  lane. 

Mr.  ■Quincunx  gazed  after  the  retreating  figure  till 
it  disappeared,  and  then  returned  wearily  to  his  work. 
He  picked  up  his  hoe  and  leaned  heavily  upon  it, 
buried  in  thought.  Thus  he  remained  for  the  space 
of  several  minutes. 

"He  is  right,"  he  muttered,  raising  his  head  at 
last.  "The  rooks  are  beginning  to  gather.  That 
means  another  summer  is  over,  —  and  a  good  thing, 
too!  I  suppose  I  ought  to  have  taken  him  back  to 
Nevilton.     But  he  is  right  about  the  rooks." 


CHAPTER   XIX 
PLANETARY  INTERVENTION 

THE  long  summer  afternoon  was  nearly  over  by 
the  time  James  Andersen  reached  the  Seven 
Ashes.  The  declining  sun  had  sunk  so  low 
that  it  was  invisible  from  the  spot  where  he  stood, 
but  its  last  horizontal  rays  cast  a  warm  ruddy  light 
over  the  tree-tops  in  the  valley.  The  high  and 
exposed  intersection  of  sandy  lanes,  which  for  time 
immemorial  had  borne  this  title,  was,  at  the  epoch 
which  concerns  us,  no  longer  faithful  to  its  name. 

The  ash-trees  which  Andersen  now  surveyed,  with 
the  feverish  glance  of  mental  obsession,  were  not 
seven  in  number.  They  were  indeed  only  three;  and, 
of  these  three,  one  was  no  more  than  a  time-worn 
stump,  and  the  others  but  newly-planted  saplings. 
Such  as  they  were,  however,  they  served  well  enough 
to  continue  the  tradition  of  the  place,  and  their 
presence  enhanced  with  a  note  of  added  melancholy 
the  gloomy  character  of  the  scene. 

Seven  Ashes,  with  its  cross-roads,  formed  indeed 
the  extreme  northern  angle  of  the  high  winding  ridge 
which  terminated  at  Wild  Pine.  Approached  from 
the  road  leading  to  this  latter  spot,  —  a  road  darkened 
on  either  hand  by  wind-swept  Scotch-firs  —  it^  was 
the  sort  of  place  where,  in  less  civilized  times,  one 
might  have  expected  to  encounter  a  threatening 
highwayman,    or    at    least    to    have    stumbled    upon 


490  WOOD  AND   STONE 

some  sinister  witch-figure  stooping  over  an  unholy 
task  or  groping  among  the  weeds.  Even  in  modern 
times  and  in  bright  sunshine  the  spot  was  not  one 
where  a  traveller  was  induced  to  linger  upon  his  way 
or  to  rest  himself.  When  overcast,  as  it  was  at  the 
moment  of  Andersen's  approach,  by  the  coming  on  of 
twilight,  it  was  a  place  from  which  a  normal-minded 
person  would  naturally  be  in  haste  to  turn.  There 
was  something  ominous  in  its  bleak  exposure  to  the 
four  quarters  of  the  sky,  and  something  full  of  ghostly 
suggestiveness  in  the  gaping  mouths  of  the  narrow 
lanes  that  led  away  from  it. 

There  was,  however,  another  and  a  much  more 
definite  justification  for  the  quickening,  at  this  point, 
of  any  wayfarer's  steps  who  knew  the  locality.  A 
stranger  to  the  place,  glancing  across  an  empty  field, 
would  have  observed  with  no  particular  interest  the 
presence  of  a  moderately  high  stone  wall  protecting 
a  small  square  enclosure.  Were  such  a  one  acquainted 
with  the  survivals  of  old  usage  in  English  villages,  he 
might  have  supposed  these  walls  to  shut  in  the  now 
unused  space  of  what  was  formerly  the  local  "pound," 
or  repository  for  stray  animals.  Such  travellers  as 
were  familiar  with  Nevilton  knew,  however,  that 
sequestered  within  this  citadel  of  desolation  were  no 
living  horses  nor  cattle,  but  very  different  and  much 
quieter  prisoners.  The  Methodist  cemetery  there, 
dates  back,  it  is  said,  to  the  days  of  religious  persecu- 
tion, to  the  days  of  Whitfield  and  Wesley,  if  not  even 
further. 

Our  fugitive  from  the  society  of  those  who  regard 
their  minds  as  normally  constituted,  cast  an  excited 
and    recognizant    eye    upon    this    forlorn    enclosure. 


PLANETARY  INTERVENTION     491 

Plucking  a  handful  of  leaves  from  one  of  the  ash- 
trees  and  thrusting  them  into  his  pocket,  some  queer 
legend — half-remembered  in  his  agitated  state  —  im- 
pelling him  to  this  quaint  action,  he  left  the  road- 
way, crossed  the  field,  and  pushing  open  the  rusty 
iron  gate  of  the  little  burying-ground,  burst  hurriedly 
in  among  its  weather-stained  memorials  of  the 
dead. 

Though  not  of  any  great  height,  the  enclosing  walls 
of  the  place  were  suflScient  to  intensify  by  several 
degrees  the  gathering  shadows.  Outside,  in  the  open 
field,  one  would  have  anticipated  a  clear  hour  of 
twilight  before  the  darkness  fell;  but  here,  among 
the  graves  of  these  humble  recalcitrants  against 
spiritual  authority,  it  seemed  as  though  the  plunge 
of  the  planet  into  its  diurnal  obscuring  was  likely  to 
be  retarded  for  only  a  few  brief  moments. 

James  Andersen  sat  down  upon  a  nameless  mound, 
and  fixed  his  gaze  upon  the  heap  of  stones  referred 
to  by  Mr.  Quincunx.  The  evening  was  warm  and 
still,  and  though  the  sky  yet  retained  much  of  its 
lightness  of  colour,  the  invading  darkness — like  a 
beast  on  padded  feet  —  was  felt  as  a  palpable  presence 
moving  slowly  among  the  tombs. 

The  stone-carver  began  muttering  in  a  low  voice 
scattered  and  incoherent  repetitions  of  his  conversa- 
tion with  the  potato-digger.  But  his  voice  suddenly 
died  away  under  a  startling  interruption.  He  be- 
came aware  that  the  heavy  cemetery  gate  was  being 
pushed  open  from   outside. 

Such  is  the  curious  law  regulating  the  action  of 
human  nerves,  and  making  them  dependent  upon 
the  mood  of  the  mind  to  which  they  are  attached. 


492  WOOD  AND   STONE 

that  an  event  which  to  a  normal  consciousness  is 
fraught  with  ghostly  terror,  to  a  consciousness  already 
strained  beyond  the  breaking  point,  appears  as  some- 
thing natural  and  ordinary.  It  is  one  of  the  privi- 
leges of  mania,  that  those  thus  afflicted  should  be 
freed  from  the  normal  oppression  of  human  terror. 
A  madman  would  take  a  ghost  into  his  arms. 

On  this  occasion,  however,  the  most  normal  nerves 
would  have  sufifered  no  shock  from  the  figure  that 
presented  itself  in  the  entrance  when  the  door  was 
fully  opened.  A  young  girl,  pale  and  breathless, 
rushed  impulsively  into  the  cemetery,  and  catching 
sight  of  Andersen  at  once,  hastened  straight  to  him 
across  the  grave-mounds. 

"I  w^as  coming  back  from  the  village,"  she  gasped, 
preventing  him  with  a  trembling  pressure  of  her  hand 
from  rising  from  his  seat,  and  casting  herself  down 
beside  him,  "and  I  met  Mr.  Clavering.  He  told  me 
you  had  gone  off  somewhere  and  I  guessed  at  once 
it  was  to  Dead  Man's  Lane.  I  said  nothing  to  him, 
but  as  soon  as  he  had  left  me,  I  ran  nearly  all  the 
way  to  the  cottage.  The  gentleman  there  told  me 
to  follow  you.  He  said  it  was  on  his  conscience  that 
he  had  advised  you  to  come  up  here.  He  said  he 
was  just  making  up  his  mind  to  come  on  after  you, 
but  he  thought  it  was  better  for  me  to  come.  So 
here  I  am !  James  —  dear  James  —  you  are  not  really 
ill  are  you?  They  frightened  me,  those  two,  by  what 
they  said.  They  seemed  to  be  afraid  that  you  would 
hurt  yourself  if  you  went  off  alone.  But  you  wouldn't 
James  dear,  would  you?  You  would  think  of  me  a 
little?" 

She  knelt  at  his  side  and  tenderly  pushed  back  the 


PLANETARY  INTERVENTION     493 

hair  from  his  brow.  "Oh  I  love  you  so!"  she  mur- 
mured, "I  love  you  so!  It  would  kill  me  if  anything 
dreadful  happened  to  you."  She  pressed  his  head 
passionately  against  her  breast,  hardly  conscious  in 
her  emotion  of  the  burning  heat  of  his  forehead  as 
it  touched  her  skin. 

"You  will  think  of  me  a  little!"  she  pleaded, 
"you  will  take  care  of  yourself  for  my  sake,  Jim.?*" 

She  held  him  thus,  pressed  tightly  against  her,  for 
several  seconds,  while  her  bosom  rose  and  fell  in 
quick  spasms  of  convulsive  pity.  She  had  torn  off 
her  hat  in  her  agitation,  and  flung  it  heedlessly  down 
at  her  feet,  and  a  heavy  tress  of  her  thick  auburn 
hair  —  colourless  now  as  the  night  itself — fell  loosely 
upon  her  bowed  neck.  The  fading  light  from  the 
sky  above  them  seemed  to  concentrate  itself  upon 
the  ivory  pallor  of  her  clasped  fingers  and  the  dead- 
white  glimmer  of  her  impassioned  face.  She  might 
have  risen  out  of  one  of  the  graves  that  surrounded 
them,  so  ghostly  in  the  gloom  did  her  figure  look. 

The  stone-carver  freed  himself  at  length,  and  took 
her  hands  in  his  own.  The  shock  of  the  girl's  emo- 
tion had  quieted  his  own  fever.  From  the  touch  of 
her  flesh  he  seemed  to  have  derived  a  new  and  rational 
calm. 

"Little  Ninsy!"  he  whispered.  "Little  Ninsy!  It 
is  not  I,  but  you,  who  are  ill.  Have  you  been  up, 
and  about,  many  days?  I  didn't  know  it!  I've  had 
troubles  of  my  own."  He  passed  his  hand  across  his 
forehead.  "I've  had  dreams,  dreams  and  fancies! 
I'm  afraid  I've  made  a  fool  of  myself,  and  fright- 
ened all  sorts  of  people.  I  think  I  must  have  been 
saying   a   lot  of   silly   things   today.      My   head   feels 


494  WOOD   AND   STONE 

still  queer.  It's  hurt  me  so  much  lately,  my  head! 
And  I've  heard  voices,  voices  that  wouldn't  stop." 

"Oh  James,  my  darling,  my  darling!"  cried  the  girl, 
in  a  great  passion  of  relief.  "I  knew  what  they  said 
wasn't  true.  I  knew  you  would  speak  gently  to  me, 
and  be  your  old  self.  Love  me,  James!  Love  me  as 
you  used  to  in  the  old  days." 

She  rose  to  her  feet  and  pulled  him  up  upon  his. 
Then  with  a  passionate  abandonment  she  flung  her 
arms  round  him  and  pressed  him  to  her,  clinging  to 
him  with  all  her  force  and  trembling  as  she  clung. 

James  yielded  to  her  emotion  more  spontaneously 
than  he  had  ever  done  in  his  life.  Their  lips  met  in 
a  long  indrawing  kiss  which  seemed  to  merge  their 
separate  identities,  and  blend  them  indissolubly 
together.  She  clung  to  him  as  a  bind-weed,  with  its 
frail  white  flowers,  might  cling  to  a  stalk  of  swaying 
corn,  and  not  unlike  such  an  entwined  stalk,  he 
swayed  to  and  fro  under  the  clinging  of  her  limbs. 
The  passion  which  possessed  her  communicated 
itself  to  him,  and  in  a  strange  ecstasy  of  oblivion  he 
embraced  her  as  desperately  as  her  wild  love  could 
wish. 

From  sheer  exhaustion  their  lips  parted  at  last, 
and  they  sank  down,  side  by  side,  upon  the  dew- 
drenched  grass,  making  the  grave-mount  their  pil- 
low. Obscurely,  through  the  clouded  chamber  of 
his  brain,  passed  the  image  of  her  poppy-scarlet 
mouth  burning  against  the  whiteness  of  her  skin. 
All  that  he  could  now  actually  see  of  her  face,  in  the 
darkness,  was  its  glimmering  pallor,  but  the  feeling 
of  her  kiss  remained  and  merged  itself  in  this  im- 
pression.    He  lay  on  his  back  with  closed  eyes,  and 


PLANETARY  INTERVENTION     495 

she  bent  over  him  as  he  lay,  and  began  kissing  him 
again,  as  if  her  soul  would  never  be  satisfied.  In  the 
intervals  of  her  kisses,  she  pressed  her  fingers  against 
his  forehead,  and  uttered  incoherent  and  tender 
whispers.  It  seemed  to  her  as  though,  by  the  very 
magnetism  of  her  devotion,  she  must  be  able  to  restore 
his  shattered  wits. 

Nor  did  her  efforts  seem  in  vain.  After  a  while 
the  stone-carver  lifted  himself  up  and  looked  round 
him.  He  smiled  affectionately  at  Ninsy  and  patted 
her,  almost  playfully,  upon  the  knee. 

"You  have  done  me  good,  child,"  he  said.  "You 
have  done  me  more  good  than  you  know.  I  don't 
think  I  shall  say  any  more  silly  things  tonight." 

He  stood  up  on  his  feet,  heaved  a  deep,  natural 
sigh,  and  stretched  himself,  as  one  roused  from  a  long 
sleep. 

"What  have  you  managed  to  do  to  me,  Ninsy?" 
he  asked.  "I  feel  completely  different.  Those 
voices  in  my  head  have  stopped."  He  turned  ten- 
derly towards  her.  "I  believe  you've  driven  the  evil 
spirit  out  of  me,  child,"  he  said. 

She  flung  her  arms  round  him  with  a  gasping  cry. 
"You  do  like  me  a  little,  Jim.f*  Oh  my  darling,  I  love 
you  so  much!  I  love  you!  I  love  you!"  She  clung 
to  him  with  frenzied  passion,  her  breast  convulsed 
with  sobs,  and  the  salt  tears  mingling  with  her 
kisses. 

Suddenly,  as  he  held  her  body  in  his  arms,  he  felt 
a  shuddering  tremor  run  through  her,  from  head  to 
foot.  Her  head  fell  back,  helpless  and  heavy,  and 
her  whole  frame  hung  limp  and  passive  upon  his 
arm.     It  almost  seemed  as  though,  in  exorcising,  by 


496  WOOD   AND   STONE 

the  magnetic  power  of  her  love,  the  demon  that 
possessed  him,  she  had  broken  her  own  heart. 

Andersen  was  overwhelmed  with  alarm  and  remorse. 
He  laid  her  gently  upon  the  ground,  and  chafed  the 
palms  of  her  hands  whispering  her  name  and  uttering 
savage  appeals  to  Providence.  His  appeals,  however, 
remained  unanswered,  and  she  lay  deadly  still,  her 
coils  of  dusky  hair  spread  loose  over  the  wet 
grass. 

He  rose  in  mute  dismay,  and  stared  angrily  round 
the  cemetery,  as  if  demanding  assistance  from  its 
silent  population.  Then  with  a  glance  at  her  motion- 
less form,  he  ran  quickly  to  the  open  gate  and 
shouted  loudly  for  help.  His  voice  echoed  hollowly 
through  the  walled  enclosure,  and  a  startled  flutter 
of  wings  rose  from  the  distant  fir-trees.  Somewhere 
down  in  the  valley,  a  dog  began  to  bark,  but  no 
other  answer  to  his  repeated  cry  reached  his  ears. 
He  returned  to  the  girl's  side. 

Frantically  he  rent  open  her  dress  at  the  throat 
and  tore  with  trembling  fingers  at  the  laces  of  her 
bodice.  He  pressed  his  hand  against  her  heart.  A 
faint,  scarcely  discernible  tremor  under  her  soft 
breast  reassured  him;  She  was  not  dead,  then!  He 
had  not  killed  her  with  his  madness. 

He  bent  down  and  made  an  effort  to  lift  her  in 
his  arms,  but  his  limbs  trembled  beneath  him  and 
his  muscles  collapsed  helplessly.  The  reaction  from 
the  tempest  in  his  brain  had  left  him  weak  as  an 
infant.  In  this  wretched  inability  to  do  anything 
to  restore  her  he  burst  into  a  fit  of  piteous  tears,  and 
struck  his  forehead  with  his  clenched  hand. 

Once    more   he   tried    desperately   to    lift   her,    and 


PLANETARY  INTERVENTION     497 

once  more,  fragile  as  she  was,  the  effort  proved 
hopelessly  beyond  his  strength.  Suddenly,  out  of 
the  darkness  beyond  the  cemetery  gate,  he  heard  the 
sound  of  voices. 

He  shouted  as  loudly  as  he  could  and  then  listened 
intently,  with  beating  heart.  An  answering  shout 
responded,  in  Luke's  well-known  voice.  A  moment 
or  two  later,  and  Luke  himself,  followed  by  Mr. 
Quincunx,  hurried  into  the  cemetery. 

Immediately  after  Ninsy's  departure  the  recluse 
had  been  seized  with  uncontrollable  remorse.  Mixed 
with  his  remorse  was  the  disturbing  consciousness  that 
since  Ninsy  knew  he  had  advised  Andersen  to  make 
his  way  to  Seven  Ashes,  the  knowledge  was  ultimately 
sure  to  reach  the  younger  brother's  ears.  Luke  was 
one  of  the  few  intimates  Mr.  Quincunx  possessed  in 
Nevilton.  The  recluse  held  him  in  curious  respect 
as  a  formidable  and  effective  man  of  the  world.  He 
had  an  exaggerated  notion  of  his  power.  He  had 
grown  accustomed  to  his  evening  visits.  He  was 
fond  of  him  and  a  little  afraid  of  him. 

It  was  therefore  an  extremely  disagreeable  thought 
to  his  mind,  to  conceive  of  Luke  as  turning  upon 
him  with  contempt  and  indignation.  Thus  impelled, 
the  perturbed  solitary  had  summoned  up  all  his 
courage  and  gone  boldly  down  into  the  village  to 
find  the  younger  Andersen.  He  had  met  him  at  the 
gate  of  Mr.  Taxater's  house. 

Left  behind  in  the  station  field  by  James  and  his 
pursuers,  Luke  had  reverted  for  a  while  with  the 
conscious  purpose  of  distracting  his  mind,  to  his  old 
preoccupation,  and  had  spent  the  afternoon  in  a 
manner    eminently    congenial,    making    love    to    two 


498  WOOD  AND   STONE 

damsels  at  the  same  time,  and  parrying  with  evasive 
urbanity  their  combined  recriminations. 

At  the  close  of  the  afternoon,  having  chatted  for 
an  hour  with  the  station-master's  wife,  and  shared 
their  family  tea,  he  had  made  his  way  according  to 
his  promise,  into  Mr.  Taxater's  book-lined  study, 
and  there,  closely  closeted  with  the  papal  champion, 
had  smoothed  out  the  final  threads  of  the  conspiracy 
that  was  to  betray  Gladys  and  liberate  Lacrima. 

Luke  had  been  informed  by  Mr.  Quincunx  of  every 
detail  of  James'  movements  and  of  Ninsy's  appearance 
on  the  scene.  The  recluse,  as  the  reader  may  believe, 
did  not  spare  himself  in  any  point.  He  even  exagger- 
ated his  fear  of  the  agitated  stone-carver,  and  as  they 
hastened  together  towards  Seven  Ashes,  he  narrated, 
down  to  the  smallest  particular,  the  strange  conver- 
sation they  had  had  in  his  potato-garden. 

"Why  do  you  suppose,"  he  enquired  of  Luke,  as 
they  ascended  the  final  slope  of  the  hill,  "he  talked 
so  much  of  someone  giving  me  money?  Who,  on 
earth,  is  likely  to  give  me  money.''  People  don't  as 
a  rule  throw  money  about,  like  that,  do  they?  And 
if  they  did,  I  am  the  last  person  they  would  throw  it 
to.  I  am  the  sort  of  person  that  kind  and  good 
people  naturally  hate.  It's  because  they  know  I 
know  the  deep  little  vanities  and  cunning  selfishness 
in  their  blessed  deeds. 

"  No  one  in  this  world  really  acts  from  pure  motives. 
We  are  all  grasping  after  our  own  gain.  We  are  all 
pleased  when  other  people  come  to  grief,  and  sorry 
when  things  go  well  with  them.  It's  human  nature, 
that's  what  it  is!  Human  nature  is  always  vicious. 
It  was  human  nature  in  me  that  made  me  send  your 


PLANETARY   INTERA'ENTION     499 

brother  up  this  hill,  instead  of  taking  him  back  to 
the  village.  It  was  human  nature  in  you  that  made 
you  curse  me  as  you  did,  when  I  first  told  you." 

Luke  did  his  best  to  draw  Mr.  Quincunx  back  from 
these  general  considerations  to  his  conversation  with 
James. 

"What  did  you  say,"  he  enquired,  "when  he  asked 
you  about  marrying  Lacrima,  supposing  this  imagi- 
nary kind  person  were  available.'  Did  you  tell  him 
you  would  do  it?" 

"You  mean,  was  he  really  jealous?"  replied  the 
other,  with  one  of  his  goblin-like  laughs. 

"It  was  a  strange  question  to  ask,"  pursued  Luke. 
"I  can't  imagine  how  you  answered  it." 

"Of  course,"  said  Mr.  Quincunx,  "we  know  very 
well  what  he  was  driving  at.  He  wanted  to  sound 
me.  Whatever  may  be  wrong  with  him  he  was 
clever  enough  to  want  to  sound  me.  We  are  all  like 
that!  We  are  all  going  about  the  world  trying  to 
find  out  each  other's  weakest  points,  with  the  idea 
that  it  may  be  useful  to  us  to  know  them,  so  as  to 
be  able  to  stick  knives  into  them  when  we  want  to." 

"It  was  certainly  rather  a  strange  question  con- 
sidering that  he  is  a  bit  attracted  to  Lacrima  him- 
self," remarked  Luke.  "I  should  think  you  were 
very  cautious  how  you  answered." 

"Cautious?"  replied  Mr.  Quincunx.  "I  don't  be- 
lieve in  caution.  Caution  is  a  thing  for  well-to-do 
people  who  have  something  to  lose,  I  answered  him 
exactly  as  I  would  answer  anyone.  I  said  I  should 
be  a  fool  not  to  agree.  And  so  I  should.  Don't  you 
think  so,  Andersen?  I  should  be  a  fool  not  to  marry, 
under  such  circumstances?" 


500  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"It  depends  what  your  feelings  are  towards  Lac- 
rima,"  answered  the  wily  stone-carver. 

"Why  do  you  say  that,  in  that  tone?"  said  the 
recluse  sharply.  "You  know  very  well  what  I  feel 
towards  Lacrima.  Everyone  knows.  She  is  the  one 
little  streak  of  romance  that  the  gods  have  allowed 
to  cross  my  path.  She  is  my  only  girl-friend  in 
Nevilton." 

At  that  moment  the  two  men  reached  Seven  Ashes 
and  the  sound  of  their  voices  was  carried  to  the  ceme- 
tery, with  the  result  already  narrated. 

It  will  be  remarked  as  an  interesting  exception  to 
the  voluble  candour  of  Mr.  Quincunx,  that  in  his 
conversation  with  Luke  he  avoided  all  mention  of 
Lacrima's  fatal  contract  with  Mr.  Romer.  He  had 
indeed,  on  an  earlier  occasion,  approached  the  out- 
skirts of  this  affair,  in  an  indirect  manner  and  with 
much  manoeuvring.  From  what  he  had  hinted  then, 
Luke  had  formed  certain  shrewd  surmises,  in  the 
direction  of  the  truth,  but  of  the  precise  facts  he 
remained  totally  ignorant. 

The  shout  for  help  which  interrupted  this  discus- 
sion gave  the  two  men  a  shock  of  complete  surprise. 
They  were  still  more  surprised,  when  on  entering 
the  cemetery  they  found  James  standing  over  the 
apparently  lifeless  form  of  Ninsy  Lintot,  her  clothes 
torn  and  her  hair  loose  and  dishevelled.  Their  as- 
tonishment reached  its  climax  when  they  noticed  the 
sane  and  rational  way  in  which  the  stone-carver 
addressed  them.  He  was  in  a  state  of  pitiful  agita- 
tion, but  he  was  no  longer  mad. 

By  dint  of  their  united  efforts  they  carried  the  girl 
across  the  field,  and  laid  her  down  beneath  the  ash- 


PLANETARY  INTERVENTION     501 

trees.  The  fresher  air  of  this  more  exposed  spot 
had  an  immediate  effect  upon  her.  She  breathed 
heavily,  and  her  fingers,  under  the  caress  of  James' 
hands,  lost  their  rigidity.  Across  her  shadowy  white 
face  a  quiver  passed,  and  her  head  moved  a  little. 

"Ninsy!  Ninsy,  dear!"  murmured  Andersen  as  he 
knelt  by  her  side.  By  the  light  of  the  clear  stars, 
which  now  filled  the  sky  with  an  almost  tropical 
splendour,  the  three  men  gazing  anxiously  at  her 
face  saw  her  eyes  slowly  open  and  her  lips  part  in 
a  tender  recognitory  smile. 

"Thank  God!"  cried  James,  "You  are  better  now, 
Ninsy,  aren't  you.'*  Here  is  Luke  and  Mr.  Quincunx. 
They  came  to  find  us.  They'll  help  me  to  get  you 
safe  home." 

The  girl  murmured  some  indistinct  and  broken 
phrase.  She  smiled  again,  but  a  pathetic  attempt 
she  made  to  lift  her  hand  to  her  throat  proved  her 
helpless  weakness.  Tenderly,  as  a  mother  might, 
James  anticipated  her  movement,  and  restored  to  as 
natural  order  as  he  could  her  torn  and  ruffled 
dress. 

At  that  moment  to  the  immense  relief  of  the  three 
watchers  the  sound  of  cart-wheels  became  audible. 
The  vehicle  proved  to  be  a  large  empty  wagon  driven 
by  one  of  Mr  Goring's  men  on  the  way  back  from 
an  outlying  hamlet.  They  all  knew  the  driver,  who 
pulled  up  at  once  at  their  appeal. 

On  an  extemporized  couch  at  the  bottom  of  the 
wagon,  made  of  the  men's  coats,  —  Mr.  Quincunx 
being  the  first  to  offer  his,  —  they  arranged  the  girl's 
passive  form  as  comfortably  as  the  rough  vehicle 
allowed.     And  then,  keeping  the  horses  at  a  walking- 


502  WOOD   AND   STONE 

pace,  they  proceeded  along  the  lane  towards  Wild 
Pine. 

For  some  while,  as  he  walked  by  the  cart's  side, 
his  hand  upon  its  well-worn  edge,  James  experienced 
extreme  weariness  and  lassitude.  His  legs  shook 
under  him  and  his  heart  palpitated.  The  demon 
which  had  been  driven  out  of  him,  had  left  him,  it 
seemed,  like  his  biblical  prototype,  exhausted  and 
half-dead.  By  the  time,  however,  that  they  reached 
the  corner,  where  Root-Thatch  Lane  descends  to  the 
village,  and  Nevil's  Gully  commences,  the  cool  air 
of  the  night  and  the  slow  monotonous  movement 
had  restored  a  considerable  portion  of  his  strength. 

None  of  the  men,  as  they  went  along,  had  felt  in 
a  mood  for  conversation.  Luke  had  spent  his  time, 
naming  to  himself,  with  his  accustomed  interest  in 
such  phenomena,  the  various  familiar  constellations 
which  shone  down  upon  them  between  the  dark 
boughs  of  the  Scotch-firs. 

The  thoughts  of  Mr.  Quincunx  were  confused  and 
strange.  He  had  fallen  into  one  of  his  self-condemna- 
tory moods,  and  like  a  solemn  ghost  moving  by  his 
side,  a  grim  projection  of  his  inmost  identity  kept 
rebuking  and  threatening  him.  As  with  most  retired 
persons,  whose  lives  are  passed  in  an  uninterrupted 
routine,  the  shock  of  any  unusual  or  unforseen  acci- 
dent fell  upon  him  with  a  double  weight. 

He  had  been  much  more  impressed  by  the  wild 
agitation  of  James,  and  by  the  sight  of  Ninsy's  un- 
conscious and  prostrate  figure,  than  anyone  who 
knew  only  the  cynical  side  of  him  would  have  sup- 
posed possible.  The  cynicism  of  Mr.  Quincunx  was 
indeed  strictly  confined  to  philosophical  conversation. 


PLANETARY   INTERVENTION     503 

In  practical  life  he  was  wont  to  encounter  any  sudden 
or  tragic  occurrence  with  the  unsophisticated  sensi- 
tiveness of  a  child.  As  with  many  other  sages,  whose 
philosophical  proclivities  are  rather  instinctive  than 
rational,  Mr.  Quincunx  was  liable  to  curious  lapses 
into  the  most  simple  and  superstitious  misgivings. 

The  influence  of  their  slow  and  mute  advance, 
under  the  majestic  heavens,  may  have  had  some- 
thing to  do  with  this  reaction,  but  it  is  certain  that 
this  other  Mr.  Quincunx  —  this  shadowy  companion 
with  no  cabbage-leaf  under  his  hat  —  pointed  a  most 
accusing  finger  at  him.  Before  they  reached  Nevil's 
Gully,  the  perturbed  recluse  had  made  up  his  mind 
that,  at  all  costs,  he  would  intervene  to  prevent  this 
scandalous  union  of  his  friend  with  John  Goring. 
Contract  or  no  contract,  he  must  exert  himself  in 
some  definite  and  overt  manner  to  stave  off  this 
outrage. 

To  his  startled  conscience  the  sinister  figure  of 
Mr.  Romer  seemed  to  extend  itself.  Colossus-like, 
from  the  outstretched  neck  of  Cygnus,  the  heavenly 
Swan,  to  the  low-hung  brilliance  of  the  "lord-star" 
Jupiter,  and  accompanying  this  Satanic  shadow  across 
his  vision,  was  a  horrible  and  most  realistic  image  of 
the  frail  Italian,  struggling  in  vain  against  the  brutal 
advances  of  Mr.  Goring.  He  seemed  to  see  Lacrima, 
lying  helpless,  as  Ninsy  had  been  lying,  but  with  no 
protecting  forms  grouped  reassuringly  around  her. 

The  sense  of  the  pitiful  helplessness  of  these  girlish 
beings,  thrust  by  an  indifferent  fate  into  the  midst 
of  life's  brute  forces,  had  pierced  his  conscience  with 
an  indelible  stab  when  first  he  had  seen  her  prostrate 
in  the   cemetery.      For   a   vague   transitory   moment. 


504  WOOD  AND   STONE 

he  had  wondered  then,  whether  his  sending  her  in 
pursuit  of  a  madman  had  resulted  in  a  most  lamen- 
table tragedy;  and  though  Andersen's  manner  had 
quickly  reassured  him  as  it  had  simultaneously  reas- 
sured Luke,  the  original  impression  of  the  shock 
remained. 

At  that  moment,  as  he  helped  to  lift  Ninsy  out  of 
the  wagon,  and  carry  her  through  the  farm-yard  to 
her  father's  cottage,  the  cynical  recluse  felt  an  almost 
quixotic  yearning  to  put  himself  to  any  inconvenience 
and  sacrifice  any  comfort,  if  only  one  such  soft 
feminine  creature  as  he  supported  now  in  his  arms, 
might  be  spared  the  contact  of  gross  and  violating 
hands. 

James  Andersen,  as  well  as  Mr.  Quincunx,  remained 
silent  during  their  return  towards  the  village.  In 
vain  Luke  strove  to  lift  off  from  them  this  oppression 
of  pensive  and  gentle  melancholy.  Neither  his  stray 
bits  of  astronomical  pedantry,  nor  his  Rabelaisean 
jests  at  the  expense  of  a  couple  of  rural  amorists 
they  stumbled  upon  in  the  over-shadowed  descent, 
proved  arresting  enough  to  break  his  companion's 
silence. 

At  the  bottom  of  Root-Thatch  Lane  Mr.  Quincunx 
separated  from  the  brothers.  His  way  led  directly 
through  the  upper  portion  of  the  village  to  the  Yeo- 
borough  road,  while  that  of  the  Andersens  passed 
between  the  priory  and  the  church. 

The  clock  in  St.  Catharine's  tower  was  striking 
ten  as  the  two  brothers  moved  along  under  the 
churchyard  wall.  With  the  departure  of  Mr.  Quin- 
cunx James  seemed  to  recover  his  normal  spirits. 
This  recovery  was  manifested  in  a  way  that  rejoiced 


PLANETARY  INTERVENTION     505 

the  heart  of  Luke,  so  congruous  was  it  with  all  their 
old  habits  and  associations;  but  to  a  stranger  over- 
hearing the  words,  it  would  have  seemed  the  reverse 
of  promising. 

"Shall  we  take  a  glance  at  the  grave?"  the  elder 
brother  suggested,  leaning  his  elbows  on  the  moss- 
grown  wall.  Luke  assented  with  alacrity,  and  the 
ancient  stones  of  the  wall  lending  themselves  easily 
to  such  a  proceeding,  they  both  clambered  over  into 
the  place  of  tombs. 

Thus  within  the  space  of  forty-eight  hours  the 
brothers  Andersen  had  been  together  in  no  less  than 
three  sepulchral  enclosures.  One  might  have  sup- 
posed that  the  same  destiny  that  made  of  their 
father  a  kind  of  modern  Old  Mortality  —  less  pious,  it 
is  true,  than  his  prototype,  but  not  less  addicted  to 
invasions  of  the  unprotesting  dead  —  had  made  it 
inevitable  that  the  most  critical  moments  of  his  sons' 
lives  should  be  passed  in  the  presence  of  these  mute 
witnesses. 

They  crossed  over  to  where  the  head-stone  of 
their  parents'  grave  rose,  gigantic  and  imposing  in 
the  clear  star  light,  as  much  larger  than  the  other 
monuments  as  the  beaver,  into  which  Pau-Puk- 
Keewis  changed  himself,  was  larger  than  the  other 
beavers.  They  sat  down  on  a  neighbouring  mound 
and  contemplated  in  silence  their  father's  work.  The 
dark  dome  of  the  sky  above  them,  strewn  with 
innumerable  points  of  glittering  light,  attracted  Luke 
once  more  to  his  old  astronomical  speculations. 

"I  have  an  idea,"  he  said,  "that  there  is  more  in 
the  influence  of  these  constellations  than  even  the 
astrologers  have  guessed.     Their  method  claims  to  be 


506  WOOD  AND  STONE 

a  scientific  one,  mathematical  in  the  exactness  of  its 
inferences.  My  feeling  about  the  matter  is,  that 
there  is  something  much  more  arbitrary,  much  more 
living  and  wayward,  in  the  manner  in  which  they 
work  their  will  upon  us.  I  said  'constellations,' 
but  I  don't  believe,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  it  is 
from  them  at  all  that  the  influences  come.  The 
natural  and  obvious  thing  is  that  the  planets  should 
affect  us,  and  affect  us  very  much  in  the  same  way 
as  we  affect  one  another.  The  ancient  races  recog- 
nized this  difference.  The  fixed  stars  are  named 
after  animals,  or  inanimate  objects,  or  after  power- 
ful, but  not  more  than  human,  heroes.  The  planets 
are  all  named  from  immortal  gods,  and  it  is  as  gods, 
—  as  wilful  and  arbitrary  gods  —  that  they  influence 
our  destinies." 

James  Andersen  surveyed  the  large  and  brilliant 
star  which  at  that  moment  hung,  like  an  enormous 
glow-worm,  against  the  southern  slope  of  Nevilton 
Mount. 

"Some  extremely  evil  planet  must  have  been  very 
active  during  these  last  weeks  with  Lacrima  and  with 
me,"  he  remarked.  "Don't  get  alarmed,  my  dear," 
he  added,  noticing  the  look  of  apprehension  which 
his  brother  turned  upon  him,  "I  shan't  worry  you 
with  any  more  silly  talk.  Those  voices  in  my  head 
have  quite  ceased.  But  that  does  not  help  Lacrima." 
He  laughed  a  sad  little  laugh. 

"I  suppose,"  he  added,  "no  one  can  help  her  in 
this  devilish  situation,  —  except  that  queer  fellow 
who's  just  left  us.  I  would  let  him  step  over  my 
dead  body,  if  he  would  only  carry  her  off  and  fool 
them  all!" 


PLANETARY  INTERVENTION     507 

Luke's  mind  plunged  into  a  difficult  problem.  His 
brother's  wits  were  certainly  restored,  and  he  seemed 
calm  and  clear-headed.  But  was  he  clear-headed 
enough  to  learn  the  details  of  the  curious  little  con- 
spiracy which  Mr.  Taxater's  diplomatic  brain  had 
evolved?  How  would  this  somewhat  ambiguous 
transaction  strike  so  romantic  a  nature  as  his? 

Luke  hesitated  and  pondered,  the  tall  dark  tower 
of  St.  Catharine's  Church  affording  him  but  scant 
inspiration,  as  it  rose  above  them  into  the  starlit 
sky.  Should  he  tell  him  or  should  he  keep  the  matter 
to  himself,  and  enter  into  some  new  pretended  scheme 
with  his  brother,  to  occupy  his  mind  and  distract  it, 
for  the  time  being? 

So  long  did  he  remain  silent,  pondering  this  ques- 
tion, that  James,  observing  his  absorbed  state  and 
concluding  that  his  subtle  intelligence  was  occupied 
in  devising  some  way  out  of  their  imbroglio,  gave 
up  all  thought  of  receiving  an  answer,  and  moving 
to  a  less  dew-drenched  resting-place,  leaned  his  head 
against  an  upright  monument  and  closed  his  eyes. 
The  feeling  that  his  admired  brother  was  taking 
Lacrima's  plight  so  seriously  in  hand  filled  him  with 
a  reassuring  calm,  and  he  had  not  long  remained  in 
his  new  position  before  his  exhausted  senses  found 
relief  in  sleep. 

Left  to  himself,  Luke  weighed  in  his  mind  every 
conceivable  aspect  of  the  question  at  stake.  Less 
grave  and  assured  than  the  metaphysical  Mr.  Taxater 
in  this  matter  of  striking  at  evil  persons  with  evil 
weapons,  Luke  was  not  a  whit  less  unscrupulous. 

No  Quincunx-like  visitings  of  compunction  had  fol- 
lowed, with  him,  their  rescue  of  Ninsy.     If  the  scene 


508  WOOD  AND   STONE 

at  Seven  Ashes  had  printed  any  impression  at  all 
upon  his  volatile  mind,  it  was  merely  a  vague  and 
agreeable  sense  of  how  beautiful  the  girl's  dead- 
white  skin  had  looked,  contrasted  with  the  disturbed 
masses  of  her  dusky  hair.  Beyond  this,  except  for  a 
pleasant  memory  of  how  lightly  and  softly  she  had 
lain  upon  his  arm,  as  he  helped  to  carry  her  across 
the  ^Yild  Pine  barton,  the  occurrence  had  left  him 
unaffected. 

His  conscience  did  not  trouble  him  in  the  smallest 
degree  with  regard  to  Gladys.  According  to  Luke's 
philosophy  of  life,  things  in  this  world  resolved 
themselves  into  a  reckless  hand-to-hand  struggle  be- 
tween opposing  personalities,  every  one  of  them  seek- 
ing, with  all  the  faculties  at  his  disposal,  to  get  the 
better  of  the  others.  It  was  absurd  to  stop  and 
consider  such  illusive  impediments  as  sentiment  or 
honour,  when  the  great,  casual,  indifferent  universe 
which  surrounds  us  knows  nothing  of  these  things! 

Out  of  the  depths  of  this  chaotic  universe  he,  Luke 
Andersen,  had  been  flung.  It  must  be  his  first  con- 
cern to  sweep  aside,  as  irrelevant  and  meaningless, 
any  mere  human  fancies,  ill-based  and  adventitious, 
upon  which  his  free  foot  might  stumble.  To  strike 
craftily  and  boldly  in  defence  of  the  person  he  loved 
best  in  the  world  seemed  to  him  not  only  natural  but 
commendable.  How  should  he  be  content  to  indulge 
in  vague  sentimental  shilly-shallying,  when  the  whole 
happiness  of  his  beloved  Daddy  James  was  at  stake? 

The  difference  between  Luke's  attitude  to  their 
mutual  conspiracy,  and  that  of  Mr.  Taxater,  lay  in 
the  fact  that  to  the  latter  the  whole  event  was 
merely    part    of    an    elaborate,    deeply-involved    cam- 


PLANETARY  INTERVENTION     509 

paign,  whose  ramifications  extended  indefinitely  on 
every  side;  while  to  the  former  the  affair  was  only  one 
of  those  innumerable  chaotic  struggles  that  a  whimsi- 
cal world  delighted  to  evoke. 

An  inquisitive  observer  might  have  wondered  what 
purpose  Mr.  Taxater  had  in  mixing  himself  up  in 
the  affair  at  all.  This  question  of  his  fellow-con- 
spirator's motive  crossed,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Luke's 
own  mind,  as  his  gaze  wandered  negligently  from  the 
Greater  to  the  Lesser  Bear,  and  from  Orion  to  the 
Pleiades.  He  came  to  the  characteristic  conclusion 
that  it  was  no  quixotic  impulse  that  had  impelled 
this  excellent  man,  but  a  completely  conscious  and 
definite  desire  —  the  desire  to  add  yet  one  more  wan- 
derer to  his  list  of  converts  to  the  Faith. 

Lacrima  was  an  Italian  and  a  Catholic.  United  to 
Mr.  Quincunx,  might  she  not  easily  win  over  that 
dreamy  infidel  to  the  religion  of  her  fathers?  Luke 
smiled  to  himself  as  he  thought  how  little  the  papal 
champion  could  have  known  the  real  character  of 
the  solitary  of  Dead  Man's  Lane.  Sooner  might  the 
sea  at  Weymouth  flow  inland,  and  wash  with  its 
waves  the  foot  of  Leo's  Hill,  than  this  ingrained 
mystic  bow  his  head  under  the  yoke  of  dogmatic 
truth! 

After  long  cogitation  with  himself,  Luke  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  it  would  be  wiser,  on  the  whole, 
to  say  nothing  to  his  brother  of  his  plan  to  work  out 
Lacrima's  release  by  means  of  her  cousin's  betrayal. 
Having  arrived  at  this  conclusion  he  rose  and  stretched 
himself,  and  glanced  at  the  sleeping  James. 

The  night  was  warm  and  windless,  but  Luke  began 
to  feel  anxious  lest  the  cold  touch  of  the  stone,  upon 


510  WOOD  AND  STONE 

which  his  brother  rested,  should  strike  a  chill  into 
his  blood.  At  the  same  time  he  was  extremely  loth 
to  disturb  so  placid  and  wholesome  a  slumber.  He 
laid  his  hand  upon  the  portentous  symbol  of  mor- 
tality which  crowned  so  aggressively  his  parents' 
monument,  and  looked  round  him.  His  vigil  had 
already  been  interrupted  more  than  once  by  the 
voices  of  late  revellers  leaving  the  Goat  and  Boy. 
Such  voices  still  recurred,  at  intermittent  moments, 
followed  by  stumbling  drunken  footsteps,  but  in  the 
intervals  the  silence  only  fell  the  deeper. 

Suddenly  he  observed,  or  fancied  he  observed,  the 
aspect  of  a  figure  extremely  familiar  to  him,  standing 
patiently  outside  the  inn  door.  He  hurried  across 
the  churchyard  and  looked  over  the  wall.  No,  he 
had  not  been  mistaken.  There,  running  her  hands 
idly  through  the  leaves  of  the  great  wistaria  which 
clung  to  the  side  of  the  house,  stood  his  little  friend 
Phyllis.  She  had  evidently  been  sent  by  her  mother, 
—  as  younger  maids  than  she  were  often  sent  —  to 
assist,  upon  their  homeward  journey,  the  unsteady 
steps  of  Bill  Santon  the  carter. 

Luke  turned  and  glanced  at  his  brother.  He  could 
distinguish  his  motionless  form,  lying  as  still  as  ever, 
beyond  the  dark  shape  of  his  father's  formidable 
tombstone.  There  was  no  need  to  disturb  him  yet. 
The  morrow  was  Sunday,  and  they  could  therefore 
be  as  late  as  they  pleased. 

He  called  softly  to  the  patient  watcher.  She 
started  violently  at  hearing  his  voice,  and  turning 
round,  peered  into  the  darkness.  By  degrees  she 
made  out  his  form,  and  waved  her  hand  to  him. 

He  beckoned  her  to  approach.     She  shook  her  head. 


planp:tary  intervention    511 

and  indicated  by  a  gesture  that  she  was  expecting 
the  appearance  of  her  father.  Once  more  he  called 
her,  making  what  seemed  to  her,  in  the  obscurity, 
a  sign  that  he  had  something  important  to  communi- 
cate. Curiosity  overcame  piety  in  the  heart  of  the 
daughter  of  Bill  Santon  and  she  ran  across  the  road. 

"Why,  you  silly  thing!"  whispered  the  crafty  Luke, 
"your  father's  been  gone  this  half  hour!  He  went  a 
bit  of  the  way  home  with  Sam  Lintot.  Old  Sam  will 
find  a  nice  little  surprise  waiting  for  him  when  he 
gets  back.  I  reckon  he'll  send  your  father  home-along 
sharp  enough." 

It  was  Luke's  habit,  in  conversation  with  the  vil- 
lagers, to  drop  lightly  into  many  of  their  provincial 
phrases,  though  both  he  and  his  brother  used,  thanks 
to  their  mother's  training,  as  good  English  as  any  of 
the  gentlefolk  of  Nevilton. 

The  influence  of  association  in  the  matter  of 
language  might  have  afforded  endless  interesting 
matter  to  the  student  of  words,  supposing  such  a 
one  had  been  able  to  overhear  the  conversations  of 
these  brothers  with  their  various  acquaintances.  Poor 
Ninsy,  for  instance,  fell  naturally  into  the  local  dialect 
when  she  talked  to  James  in  her  own  house;  and  as- 
sumed, with  equal  facility,  her  loved  one's  more 
colourless  manner  of  speech,  when  addressing  him  on 
ground  less  familiar  to  her. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  universal  spread  of  board- 
school  education  in  that  corner  of  the  country  had 
begun  to  sap  the  foundations  of  the  old  local  peculi- 
arities. Where  these  survived,  in  the  younger  genera- 
tion, they  survived  side  by  side  with  the  newer  tricks 
of   speech.      The   Andersens'   girl-friends   were,   all   of 


5n  WOOD   AND   STONE 

theui,  in  reality,  expert  bilinguists.  They  spoke 
the  King's  English,  and  they  spoke  the  Nevilton 
English,  with  equal  ease,  if  with  unequal  expres- 
siveness. 

The  shrewd  fillip  to  her  curiosity,  which  Luke's 
reference  to  Lintot's  home-coming  had  given,  allured 
Phyllis  into  accepting  without  protest  his  audacious 
invention  about  her  father.  The  probability  of  such 
an  occurrence  seemed  sealed  with  certainty,  when 
turning,  at  a  sign  from  her  friend,  she  saw,  against 
the  lighted  window  the  burly  form  of  the  landlord 
engaged  in  closing  his  shutters.  It  was  not  the  custom, 
as  Phyllis  well  knew,  of  this  methodical  dispenser  of 
Dionysian  joys  to  "shutter  up  house,"  as  he  called 
it,  until  every  guest  had  departed.  How  could  she 
guess  —  little  deluded  maid!  —  that,  stretched  upon 
the  floor  in  the  front  parlor,  stared  at  by  the  land- 
lord's three  small  sons,  was  the  comatose  body  of 
her  worthy  parent  breathing  like  one  of  Mr.  Goring's 
pigs? 

"Tain't  no  good  my  waiting  here  then,"  she  whis- 
pered. "What  do  'ee  mean  by  Sam  Lintot's  being 
surprised-like?  Be  Ninsy  taken  with  her  heart 
again?" 

"Let  me  help  you  over  here,"  answered  the  stone- 
carver,  "that  Priory  wench  was  talking,  just  now, 
just  across  yon  wall.  She'll  be  hearing  what  we  say 
if  we  don't  move  on  a  bit." 

"Us  don't  mind  what  a  maid  like  her  do  hear,  do 
us,  Luke  dear?"  whispered  the  girl  in  answer.  "Give 
me  a  kiss,  sonny,  and  let  me  be  getting  home- 
along!" 

She  stood  on  tiptoe  and  raised  her  hands  over  the 


PLANETARY  INTERVENTION     513 

top  of  the  wall.  Luke  seized  her  wrists,  and  retained 
them  in  a  vicious  clutch. 

"Put  your  foot  into  one  of  those  holes,"  he  said, 
"and  we'll  soon  have  you  across." 

Unwilling  to  risk  a  struggle  in  such  a  spot,  and  not 
really  at  all  disinclined  for  an  adventure,  the  girl 
obeyed  him,  and  after  being  hoisted  up  upon  the 
wall,  was  lifted  quickly  down  on  the  other  side,  and 
enclosed  in  Luke's  gratified  arms.  The  amorous 
stone-carver  remembered  long  afterwards  the  peculiar 
thrill  of  almost  chaste  pleasure  which  the  first  touch 
of  her  cold  cheeks  gave  him,  as  she  yielded  to  his 
embrace. 

"/s  Nin  Lintot  bad  again?"  she  enquired,  drawing 
herself  away  at  last. 

Luke  nodded.  "You  won't  see  her  about,  this 
week  —  or  next  week  —  or  the  week  after,"  he  said. 
"She's  pretty  far  gone,  this  time,  I'm  afraid." 

Phyllis  rendered  to  her  acquaintance's  misfortune 
the  tribute  of  a  conventional  murmur. 

"Oh,  let's  go  and  look  at  where  they  be  burying 
Jimmy  Pringle!"  she  suddenly  w^hispered,  in  an  awe- 
struck, excited  tone. 

"What!"  cried  Luke,  "you  don't  mean  to  say  he's 
dead,  — the  old  man?" 

"Where's  't  been  to,  then,  these  last  days?"  she 
enquired.  "He  died  yesterday  morning  and  they 
be  going  to  bury  him  on  Monday.  'Twill  be  a  mon- 
strous large  funeral.  Can't  be  but  you've  heard  tell 
of  Jimmy's  being  done  for."  She  added,  in  an  amazed 
and  bewildered  tone. 

"I've  been  very  busy  this  last  week,"  said  Luke. 

"You  didn't  seem  very  busy  this  afternoon,  when 


514  WOOD  AND   STONE 

you  were  with  Annie  and  me  up  at  station-field," 
she  exclaimed,  with  a  mischievous  little  laugh.  Then 
in  a  changed  voice,  "Let's  go  and  see  where  they're 
going  to  put  him.  It's  somewhere  over  there,  under 
South  Wall." 

They  moved  cautiously  hand  in  hand  between  the 
dark  grassy  mounds,  the  heavy  dew  soaking  their 
shoes. 

Suddenly  Phyllis  stopped,  her  fingers  tightening, 
and  a  delicious  thrill  of  excitement  quivering  through 
her.     "There  it  is.     Look!"  she  whispered. 

They  advanced  a  step  or  two,  and  found  them- 
selves confronted  by  a  gloomy  oblong  hole,  and  an 
ugly  heap  of  ejected  earth. 

"Oh,  how  awful  it  do  look,  doesn't  it, Luke  darling?" 
she  murmured,  clinging  closely  to  him. 

He  put  his  arm  round  the  girl's  waist,  and  together, 
under  the  vast  dome  of  the  starlit  sky,  the  two 
warm-blooded  youthful  creatures  contemplated  the 
resting-place  of  the  generations. 

"Its  queer  to  think,"  remarked  Luke  pensively, 
"that  just  as  we  stand  looking  on  this,  so,  when 
we're  dead,  other  people  will  stand  over  our  graves, 
and  we  know  nothing  and  care  nothing!" 

"They  dug  this  out  this  morning,"  said  Phyllis, 
more  concerned  with  the  immediate  drama  than  with 
general  meditations  of  mortality.  "Old  Ben  Fursling's 
son  did  it,  and  my  father  helped  him  in  his  dinner- 
hour.  They  said  another  hot  day  like  this  would 
make  the  earth  too  hard." 

Luke  moved  forward,  stepping  cautiously  over  the 
dark  upturned  soil.     He  paused  at  the  extreme  edge^ 
of  the  gaping  recess. 


PLANETARY  INTERVENTION     515 

"What'll  you  give  me,"  he  remarked  turning  to 
his  companion,  "if  I  climb  down  into  it?" 

"Don't  talk  like  that,  Luke,"  protested  the  girl. 
"  'Tisn't  lucky  to  say  them  things.  I  wouldn't  give 
you    nothing.      I'd    run    straight    away    and    leave 

you." 

The  young  man  knelt  down  at  the  edge  of  the 
hole,  and  with  the  elegant  cane  he  had  carried  in  his 
hand  all  that  afternoon,  fumbled  profanely  in  its 
dusky  depths.  Suddenly,  to  the  girl's  absolute  horror, 
he  scrambled  round,  and  deliberately  let  himself 
down  into  the  pit.  She  breathed  a  sigh  of  unutter- 
able relief,  when  she  observed  his  head  and  shoulders 
still  above  the  level  of  the  ground. 

"It's  all  right,"  he  whispered,  "they've  left  it 
half-finished.  I  suppose  they'll  do  the  rest  on 
Monday." 

"Please  get  out  of  it,  Luke,"  the  girl  pleaded. 
"I  don't  like  to  see  you  there.  It  make  me  think 
you're    standing    on    Jimmy    Pringle." 

Luke  obeyed  her  and  emerged  from  the  earth 
almost  as  rapidly  as  he  had  descended. 

When  he  was  once  more  by  her  side,  Phyllis  gave 
a  little  half-deliberate  shudder  of  exquisite  terror. 
"Fancy,"  she  whispered,  clinging  tightly  to  him,  "if 
you  was  to  drag  me  to  that  hole,  and  put  me  down 
there!     I  think  I  should  die  of  fright." 

This  conscious  playing  with  her  own  girlish  fears 
was  a  very  interesting  characteristic  in  Phyllis 
Santon.  Luke  had  recognized  something  of  the  sort 
in  her  before,  and  now  he  wondered  vaguely,  as  he 
glanced  from  the  obscurity  of  Nevilton  Churchyard 
to  the  brilliant  galaxy  of  luminous  splendour  surround- 


516 WOOD  AND   STONE 

ing  the  constellation  Pegasus,  whether  she  really 
wanted  him  to  take  her  at  her  word. 

His  thoughts  were  interrupted  by  the  sound  of 
voices  at  the  inn-door.  They  both  held  their  breath, 
listening  intently. 

"There's  father!"  murmured  the  girl.  "He  must 
have  come  back  from  Lintot's  and  be  trying  to  get 
into  the  public  again!  Come  and  help  me  over  the 
wall,  Luke  darling.    Only  don't  let  anybody  see  us." 

As  they  hurried  across  the  enclosure,  Phyllis  whis- 
pered in  his  ears  a  remark  that  seemed  to  him  either 
curiously  irrelevant,  or  inspired  in  an  occult  manner 
by  psychic  telepathy.  She  had  lately  refrained  from 
any  reference  to  Lacrima.  The  Italian's  friendliness 
to  her  under  the  HuUaway  elms  had  made  her  reti- 
cent upon  this  subject.  On  this  occasion,  however, 
though  quite  ignorant  of  James'  presence  in  the 
churchyard,  she  suddenly  felt  compelled  to  say  to 
Luke,  in  an  intensely  serious  voice: 

"If  some  of  you  clever  ones  don't  stop  that  mar- 
riage of  Master  Goring,  there'll  be  some  more  holes 
dug  in  this  place!  There  be  some  things  what  them 
above  never  will  allow." 

He  helped  her  over  the  wall,  and  watched  her  over- 
take her  staggering  parent,  who  had  already  reeled 
some  distance  down  the  road.  Then  he  returned  to 
his  brother  and  roused  him  from  his  sleep.  James 
was  sulky  and  irritable  at  being  so  brusquely  restored 
to  consciousness,  but  the  temperature  of  his  mind 
appeared  as  normal  and  natural  as  ever. 

They  quitted  the  place  without  further  conversa- 
tion, and  strode  off  in  silence  up  the  village  street. 
The  perpendicular  slabs  of  the  crowded  head  stones. 


PLANETARY  INTERVENTION     517 

and  the  yet  more  numerous  mounds  that  had  neither 
name  nor  memory,  resumed  their  taciturn  and  lonely 
watch. 

To  no  human  eyes  could  be  made  visible  the  poor 
thin  shade  that  was  once  Jimmy  Pringle,  as  it  swept, 
bat-like,  backwards  and  forwards,  across  the  dew- 
drenched  grass.  But  the  shade  itself,  endowed  with 
more  perception  than  had  been  permitted  to  it  while 
imprisoned  in  the  "muddy  vesture"  of  our  flesh 
and  blood,  became  aware,  in  its  troubled  flight,  of 
a  singular  spiritual  occurrence. 

Rising  from  the  base  of  that  skull-crowned  monu- 
ment, two  strange  and  mournful  phantoms  flitted 
waveringly,  like  huge  ghost-moths,  along  the  pro- 
truding edge  of  the  church-roof.  Two  desolate  and 
querulous  voices,  like  the  voices  of  conflicting  winds 
through  the  reeds  of  some  forlorn  salt-marsh,  quivered 
across  the  listening  fields. 

"It  is  strong  and  unconquered  —  the  great  heart 
of  my  Hill,"  one  voice  wailed  out.  "It  draws  them. 
It  drives  them.  The  earth  is  with  it;  the  planets  are 
for  it,  and  all  their  enchantments  cannot  prevail 
against  it!" 

"The  leaves  may  fall  and  the  trees  decay,"  moaned 
the  second  voice,  "but  where  the  sap  has  once 
flowed,  Love  must  triumph." 

The  fluttering  shadow  of  Jimmy  Pringle  fled  in 
terror  from  these  strange  sounds,  and  took  refuge 
among  the  owls  in  the  great  sycamore  of  the  Priory 
meadow.  A  falling  meteorite  swept  downwards  from 
the  upper  spaces  of  the  sky  and  lost  itself  behind 
the  Wild  Pine  ridge. 

"Strength    and    cunning,"    the    first    voice     wailed 


518  WOOD  AND  STONE 

forth  again,  "alone  possess  their  heart's  desire.  All 
else  is  vain  and  empty." 

"Love  and  Sacrifice,"  retorted  the  other,  "outlast 
all  victories.  Beyond  the  circle  of  life  they  rule  the 
darkness,  and  death  is  dust  beneath  their  feet." 

Crouched  on  a  branch  of  his  protecting  sycamore, 
the  thin  wraith  of  Jimmy  Pringle  trembled  and  shook 
like  an  aspen-leaf.  A  dumb  surprise  possessed  the 
poor  transmuted  thing  to  find  itself  even  less  assured 
of  palpable  and  familiar  salvation,  than  when,  after 
drinking  cider  at  the  Boar's  Head  in  Athelston,  he 
had  dreamed  dreams  at  Captain  WhiSley's  gate. 

"The  Sun  is  lord  and  god  of  the  earth,"  wailed 
the  first  voice  once  more.  "The  Sun  alone  is  master 
in  the  end.  Lust  and  Power  go  forth  with  him,  and 
all  flesh  obeys  his  command." 

"The  Moon  draws  more  than  the  tides,"  answered 
the  second  voice.  "In  the  places  of  silence  where 
Love  waits,  only  the  Moon  can  pass;  and  only  the 
Moon  can  hear  the  voice  of  the  watchers." 

From  the  red  planet,  high  up  against  the  church- 
tower,  to  the  silver  planet  low  down  among  the 
shadowy  trees,  the  starlit  spaces  listened  mutely  to 
these  antiphonal  invocations.  Only  the  distant  ex- 
panse of  the  Milky  Way,  too  remote  in  its  translunar 
gulfs  to  heed  these  planetary  conflicts,  shimmered 
haughtily  down  upon  the  Wood  and  Stone  of  Nevil- 
ton  —  impassive,  indifferent,  unconcerned. 


CHAPTER   XX 
VOX  POPULI 

JAMES  ANDERSEN'S  mental  state  did  not  fall 
away  from  the  restored  equilibrium  into  which 
the  unexpected  intervention  of  Ninsy  Lintot  had 
magnetized  and  medicined  him.  He  went  about  his 
work  as  usual,  gloomier  and  more  taciturn,  perhaps, 
than  before,  but  otherwise  with  no  deviation  from 
his  normal  condition. 

Luke  noticed  that  he  avoided  all  mention  of  Lac- 
rima,  and,  as  far  as  the  younger  brother  knew,  made 
no  effort  to  see  her.  Luke  himself  received,  two 
days  after  the  incident  in  the  Methodist  cemetery,  a 
somewhat  enigmatic  letter  from  Mr.  Taxater.  This 
letter  bore  a  London  post-mark  and  informed  the 
stone-carver  that  after  a  careful  consideration  of 
the  whole  matter,  and  an  interview  with  Lacrima,  the 
writer  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  no  good  pur- 
pose would  be  served  by  carrying  their  plan  into  exe- 
cution. Mr.  Taxater  had,  accordingly,  so  the  missive 
declared,  destroyed  the  incriminating  document  which 
he  had  induced  Luke  to  sign,  and  had  relinquished 
all  thought  of  an  interview  with  Mr.  Dangelis. 

The  letter  concluded  by  congratulating  Luke  on  his 
brother's  recovery  —  of  which,  it  appeared,  the  diplo- 
matist had  been  informed  by  the  omniscient  Mrs. 
Watnot  —  and  assuring  him  that  if  ever,  in  any  way, 
he,   the  writer,  could  be  of  service  to  either  of  the 


520  WOOD   AND   STOXE 

two  brothers,  they  could  count  on  his  unfailing  re- 
gard. An  obscure  post-script,  added  in  pencil  in  a 
very  minute  and  delicate  hand,  indicated  that  the 
interview  with  Lacrima,  referred  to  above,  had  con- 
firmed the  theologian  in  a  suspicion  that  hitherto 
he  had  scrupulously  concealed,  namely,  that  their 
concern  with  regard  to  the  Italian's  position  was  less 
called  for  than  appearances  had  led  them  to  sup- 
pose. 

After  reading  and  weighing  this  last  intimation, 
before  he  tore  up  the  letter  into  small  fragments, 
the  cynical  Luke  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
devoted  champion  of  the  papacy  had  found  out  that 
his  co-religionist  had  fallen  from  grace;  in  other  words, 
that  Lacrima  Traffic  was  no  longer  a  Catholic.  It 
could  hardly  be  expected,  the  astute  youth  argued, 
that  Mr.  Taxater  should  throw  himself  into  a  diffi- 
cult and  troublesome  intrigue  in  order  that  an  apos- 
tate from  the  inviolable  Faith,  once  for  all  delivered 
to  the  Saints,  should  escape  what  might  reasonably 
be  regarded  as  a  punishment  for  her  apostacy. 

The  theologian's  post-script  appeared  to  hint  that 
the  girl  was  not,  after  all,  so  very  unwilling,  in  this 
matter  of  her  approaching  marriage.  Luke,  in  so  far 
as  he  gave  such  an  aspect  of  the  affair  any  particular 
thought,  discounted  this  plausible  suggestion  as  a 
mere  conscience-quieting  salve,  introduced  by  the 
writer  to  smooth  over  the  true  cause  of  his  reaction. 

For  his  own  part  it  had  been  always  of  James  and 
not  of  Lacrima  he  had  thought,  and  since  James  had 
now  been  restored  to  his  normal  state,  the  question 
of  the  Italian's  moods  and  feelings  affected  him  very 
little.      He    was    still    prepared    to    discuss    with    his 


vox  POPULI  521 


brother  any  new  chance  of  intervention  that  might 
offer  itself  at  the  last  moment.  He  desired  James' 
peace  of  mind  before  everything  else,  but  in  his 
heart  of  hearts  he  had  considerable  doubt  whether 
the  mood  of  self-effacing  magnanimity  which  had 
led  his  brother  to  contemplate  Lacrima's  elopement 
with  Mr.  Quincunx,  would  long  survive  the  return 
of  his  more  normal  temper.  Were  he  in  James' 
position,  he  told  himself  grimly,  he  should  have  much 
preferred  that  the  girl  should  marry  a  man  she  hated 
rather  than  one  she  loved,  as  in  such  a  case  the  field 
would  be  left  more  open  for  any  future  "rapproche- 
ment." 

Thus  it  came  about  that  the  luckless  Pariah,  by 
the  simple  accident  of  her  inability  to  hold  fast  to 
her  religion,  lost  at  the  critical  moment  in  her  life 
the  support  of  the  one  friendly  power,  that  seemed 
capable,  in  that  confusion  of  opposed  forces,  of  bring- 
ing to  her  aid  temporal  as  well  as  spiritual,  pressure. 
She  was  indeed  a  prisoner  by  the  waters  of  Babylon, 
but  her  forgetfulness  of  Sion  had  cut  her  off  from  the 
assistance  of  the  armies  of  the  Lord. 

The  days  passed  on  rapidly  now,  over  the  heads  of 
the  various  persons  involved  in  our  narrative.  For 
James  and  Lacrima,  and  in  a  measure  for  Mr.  Quin- 
cunx, too,  —  since  it  must  be  confessed  that  the 
shock  of  Ninsy's  collapse  had  not  resulted  in  any 
permanent  tightening  of  the  recluse's  moral  fibre,  — 
they  passed  with  that  treacherous  and  oblivious 
smoothness  which  dangerous  waters  are  only  too 
apt  to  wear,  when  on  the  very  verge  of  the  cataract. 

In  the  stir  and  excitement  of  the  great  political 
struggle  which  now  swept  furiously  from  one  end  of 


522  WOOD   AND   STONE 

the  country  to  the  other,  the  personal  fortunes  of  a 
group  of  tragically  involved  individuals,  in  a  small 
Somersetshire  village,  seemed  to  lose,  for  all  except 
those  most  immediately  concerned,  every  sort  of 
emphasis  and  interest. 

The  polling  day  at  last  arrived,  and  a  considerable 
proportion  of  the  inhabitants  of  Nevilton,  both  men 
and  women,  found  themselves,  as  the  end  of  the 
fatal  hours  approached,  wedged  and  hustled,  in  a 
state  of  distressing  and  exhausted  suspense,  in  the 
densely  crowded  High  Street  in  front  of  the  Yeo- 
borough  Town  Hall. 

Mr.  Clavering  himself  was  there,  and  in  no  very 
amiable  temper.  Perverse  destiny  had  caused  him 
to  be  helplessly  surrounded  by  a  noisy  high-spirited 
crew  of  Yeoborough  factory-girls,  to  whom  the  event 
in  progress  was  chiefly  interesting,  in  so  far  as  it 
afforded  them  an  opportunity  to  indulge  in  uproarious 
chaff  and  to  throw  insulting  or  amorous  challenges 
to  various  dandified  youths  of  their  acquaintance, 
whom  they  caught  sight  of  in  the  confusion.  Mr. 
Clavering's  ill-temper  reached  its  climax  when  he 
became  aware  that  a  good  deal  of  the  free  and  indis- 
creet badinage  of  his  companions  was  addressed  to 
none  other  than  his  troublesome  parishioner,  Luke 
Andersen,  whose  curly  head,  surmounted  by  an 
aggressively  new  straw  hat,  made  itself  visible  not 
far  off. 

The  mood  of  the  vicar  of  Nevilton  during  the  last 
few  weeks  had  been  one  of  accumulative  annoyance. 
Everything  had  gone  wrong  with  him,  and  it  was 
only  by  an  immense  effort  of  his  will  that  he  had 
succeeded   in   getting   through    his   ordinary   pastoral 


vox  POPULI  523 


labour,  without  betraying  the  unsettled  state  of  his 
mind  and  soul. 

He  could  not,  do  what  he  might,  get  Gladys  out 
of  his  thoughts  for  one  single  hour  of  the  day.  She 
had  been  especially  soft  and  caressing,  of  late,  in 
her  manner  towards  him.  More  submissive  than  of 
old  to  his  spiritual  admonitions,  she  had  dropped  her 
light  and  teasing  ways,  and  had  assumed,  in  her 
recent  lessons  with  him,  an  air  of  pliable  wistfulness, 
composed  of  long,  timidly  interrupted  glances  from 
her  languid  blue  eyes,  and  little  low-voiced  murmurs 
of  assent  from  her  sweetly-parted  lips. 

It  was  in  vain  that  the  poor  priest  struggled  against 
this  obsession.  The  girl  was  as  merciless  as  she  was 
subtle  in  the  devices  she  employed  to  make  sure  of 
her  hold  upon  him.  She  would  lead  him  on,  by  hesi- 
tating and  innocent  questions,  to  expound  some  diffi- 
cult matter  of  faith;  and  then,  just  as  he  was  launched 
out  upon  a  high,  pure  stream  of  mystical  interpreta- 
tion, she  would  bring  his  thoughts  back  to  herself 
and  her  deadly  beauty,  by  some  irresistible  feminine 
trick,  which  reduced  all  his  noble  speculations  to  so 
much  empty  air. 

Ever  since  that  night  when  he  had  trembled  so 
helplessly  under  the  touch  of  her  soft  fingers  beneath 
the  cedars  of  the  South  Drive,  she  had  sought  oppor- 
tunities for  evoking  similar  situations.  She  would 
prolong  the  clasp  of  her  hand  when  they  bade  one 
another  good  night,  knowing  well  how  this  apparently 
natural  and  unconscious  act  would  recur  in  throbs 
of  adder's  poison  through  the  priest's  veins,  long  after 
the  sun  had  set  behind  St.  Catharine's  tower. 

She  loved  sometimes  to  tantalize  and  trouble  him 


524  WOOD   AND   STONE 

by  relating  incidents  which  brought  herself  and  her 
American  fiance  into  close  association  in  his  mind. 
She  would  wistfully  confide  to  him,  for  example, 
how  sometimes  she  grew  weary  of  love-making, 
begging  him  to  tell  her  whether,  after  all,  she  were 
wise  in  risking  the  adventure  of  marriage. 

By  these  arts,  and  others  that  it  were  tedious  to 
enumerate,  the  girl  gradually  reduced  the  unfortunate 
clergyman  to  a  condition  of  abject  slavery.  The 
worst  of  it  was  that,  though  his  release  from  her 
constant  presence  was  rapidly  approaching  —  with  the 
near  date  of  the  ceremonies  for  which  he  was  pre- 
paring her  —  instead  of  being  able  to  rejoice  in  this, 
he  found  himself  dreading  it  with  every  nerve  of  his 
harassed  senses. 

Clavering  had  felt  himself  compelled,  on  more  than 
one  occasion,  to  allude  to  the  project  of  Lacrima's 
marriage,  but  his  knowledge  of  the  Italian's  character 
was  so  slight  that  Gladys  had  little  difficulty  in  mak- 
ing him  believe,  or  at  least  persuade  himself  he 
believed,  that  no  undue  pressure  was  being  put  upon 
her. 

It  was  of  Lacrima  that  he  suddenly  found  himself 
thinking  as,  hustled  and  squeezed  between  two 
obstreperous  factory-girls,  he  watched  the  serene 
and  self-possessed  Luke  enjoying  with  detached 
amusement  the  vivid  confusion  round  him.  The 
fantastic  idea  came  into  his  head,  that  in  some  sort 
of  way  Luke  was  responsible  for  those  sinister  ru- 
mours regarding  the  Italian's  position  in  Nevilton, 
which  had  thrust  themselves  upon  his  ears  as  he 
moved  to  and  fro  among  the  villagers. 

He  had  learnt  of  the  elder  Andersen's  recovery  from 


vox  POPULI  525 


Mrs.  Fringe,  but  even  that  wise  lady  had  not  been 
able  to  associate  this  event  with  the  serious  illness 
of  Ninsy  Lintot,  to  whose  bed-side  the  young  clergy- 
man had  been  summoned  more  than  once  during  the 
last  week. 

Clavering  felt  an  impulse  of  unmitigated  hatred 
for  the  equable  stone-carver  as  he  watched  him  bandy- 
ing jests  with  this  or  the  other  person  in  the  crowd, 
and  yet  so  obviously  holding  himself  apart  from  it 
all,  and  regarding  the  whole  scene  as  if  it  only  existed 
for  his  amusement. 

A  sudden  rush  of  some  extreme  partisans  of  the 
popular  cause,  making  a  furious  attempt  to  over- 
power the  persistent  taunts  of  a  group  of  young 
farmers  who  stood  above  them  on  a  raised  portion 
of  the  pavement,  drove  a  wedge  of  struggling  hu- 
manity into  the  midst  of  the  crowd  who  surrounded 
the  irritable  priest.  Clavering  was  pushed,  in  spite 
of  his  efforts  to  extricate  himself,  nearer  and  nearer 
to  his  detested  rival,  and  at  last,  in  the  most  gro- 
tesque and  annoying  manner  possible,  he  found  him- 
self driven  point-blank  into  the  stone-carver's  very 
arms.  Luke  smiled,  with  what  seemed  to  the  heated 
and  flustered  priest  the  last  limit  of  deliberate  im- 
pertinence. 

But  there  was  no  help  for  it.  Clavering  was 
forced  to  accept  his  proferred  hand,  and  return,  with 
a  measure  of  courtesy,  his  nonchalant  greeting. 
Squeezed  close  together — for  the  crowd  had  concen- 
trated itself  now  into  an  immoveable  mass — the  for- 
tunate and  the  unfortunate  lover  of  Gladys  Romer 
listened,  side  by  side,  to  the  deafening  shouts,  which, 
first  from  one  party  and  then  from  the  other,  heralded 


526  WOOD  AND  STONE 

the  appearance  of  the  opposing  candidates  upon  the 
balcony  above. 

"I  really  hardly  know,"  said  Luke,  in  a  loud  whis- 
per, "which  side  you  are  on.  I  suppose  on  the  Con- 
servative? These  radicals  are  all  Nonconformists, 
and  only  waiting  for  a  chance  of  pulling  the  Church 
down." 

"Thank  you,"  retorted  the  priest  raising  his  voice 
so  as  to  contend  against  the  hubbub  about  them. 
"I  happen  to  be  a  radical  myself.  My  own  hope  is 
that  the  Church  will  be  pulled  down.  The  Church 
I  believe  in  cannot  be  touched.  Its  foundations  are 
too  deep." 

"Three  cheers  for  Romer  and  the  Empire!"  roared 
a  voice  behind  them. 

"Wone  and  the  People!  Wone  and  the  working- 
man!"  vociferated  another. 

"You'll  be  holding  your  confirmation  soon,  I 
understand,"  murmured  Luke  in  his  companion's  ear, 
as  a  swaying  movement  in  the  crowd  squeezed  them 
even  more  closely  together. 

Hugh  Clavering  realized  for  the  first  time  in  his 
life  what  murderers  feel  the  second  before  they  strike 
their  blow.  He  could  have  willingly  planted  his 
heel  at  that  moment  upon  the  stone-carver's  face. 
Surely  the  man  was  intentionally  provoking  him.  He 
must  know  —  he  could  not  help  knowing  —  the  agi- 
tation in  his  nerves. 

"Romer  and  Order!  Romer  and  Sound  Finance!" 
roared  one  portion  of  the  mob. 

"Wone  and  Liberty!  Wone  and  Justice!"  yelled 
the  opposing  section. 

"I     love     a     scene     like     this,"     whispered     Luke. 


I 


vox  POPULI  527 

"Doesn't  it  make  you  beautifully  aware  of  the  con- 
temptible littleness  of  the  human  race?" 

"I  am  not  only  a  radical,"  retorted  Clavering, 
"but  I  happen  also  to  be  a  human  being,  and  one  who 
can't  take  so  airy  a  view  of  an  occasion  of  this  kind. 
The  enthusiasm  of  these  people  doesn't  at  all  amuse 
me.     I  sympathize  with  it." 

The  stone-carver  was  not  abashed  by  this  rebuke. 
"A  matter  of  taste,"  he  said,  "a  matter  of  taste." 
Then,  freeing  his  arm  which  had  got  uncomfortably 
wedged  against  his  side,  and  pushing  back  his  hat, 
"I  love  to  associate  these  outbursts  of  popular  feel- 
ing with  the  movements  of  the  planets.  Tonight, 
you  know,  one  ought  to  be  able  to  see — " 

Clavering  could  no  longer  contain  himself.  "Damn 
your  planets!"  he  cried,  in  a  tone  so  loud,  that  an 
old  lady  in  their  neighbourhood  ejaculated,  "Hush! 
hush!"  and  looked  round  indignantly. 

"I  beg  your  pardon,"  muttered  the  priest,  a  little 
ashamed.  "What  I  mean  is,  I  am  most  seriously 
concerned  about  this  contest.  I  pray  devoutly  Wone 
will  win.  It'll  be  a  genuine  triumph  for  the  working 
classes  if  he  does." 

"Romer  and  the  Empire!"  interpolated  the  thun- 
derous voice  behind  them. 

"I  don't  care  much  for  the  man  himself,"  he  went 
on,  "but  this  thing  goes  beyond  personalities." 

"I'm  all  for  Romer  myself,"  said  Luke.  "I  have 
the  best  of  reasons  for  being  grateful  to  him,  though 
he  is  my  employer." 

"What  do  you  mean?  What  reasons?"  cried 
Clavering  sharply,  once  more  beginning  to  feel  the 
most  unchristian  hatred  for  this  urbane  youth. 


528  WOOD  AND  STONE 

"Oh,  I'm  sure  I  needn't  tell  you  that,  sir,"  responded 
Luke;  "I'm  sure  you  know  well  enough  how  much  I 
admire  our  Nevilton  beauty." 

Gladys'  unhappy  lover  choked  with  rage.  He  had 
never  in  his  life  loathed  anything  so  much  as  he 
loathed  the  way  Luke's  yellow  curls  grew  on  his 
forehead.  His  fingers  clutched  convulsively  the  palms 
of  his  hands.  He  would  like  to  have  seized  that 
crop  of  hair  and  beaten  the  man's  head  against  the 
pavement. 

"I  think  it's  abominable,"  he  cried,  "this  forcing 
of  Miss  Trafiio  to  marry  Goring.  For  a  very  little, 
I'd  write  to  the  bishop  about  it  and  refuse  to  marry 
them." 

The  causes  that  led  to  this  unexpected  and  irrele- 
vant outburst  were  of  profound  subtlety.  Clavering 
forgot,  in  his  desire  to  make  his  rival  responsible  for  q 
every  tragedy  in  the  place,  that  he  had  himself 
resolved  to  discount,  as  mere  village  gossip,  all  the 
dark  rumours  he  had  heard.  The  blind  anger  which 
plunged  him  into  this  particular  outcry,  sprang,  in 
reality,  from  the  bitterness  of  his  own  conscience- 
stricken  misgivings. 

"I  don't  think  you  will,"  remarked  Luke,  lowering 
his  voice  to  a  whisper,  though  the  uproar  about  them 
rendered  such  a  precaution  quite  unnecessary,  "It 
is  not  as  a  rule  a  good  thing  to  interfere  in  these 
matters.  Miss  Gladys  has  told  me  herself  that  the 
whole  thing  is  an  invention  of  Romer's  enemies, 
probably  of  this  fellow  Wone." 

"She's  told  me  the  same  story,"  burst  out  the 
priest,  "but  how  am  I  to  believe  her?" 

A  person  unacquainted  with  the  labyrinthine  con- 


vox   POPULI  529 


N 


olutions  of  the  human  mind  would  have  been  stag- 
gered at  hearing  the  infatuated  slave  thus  betray 
his  suspicion  of  his  enchantress,  and  to  his  own 
rival;  but  the  man's  long-troubled  conscience,  driven 
by  blind  anger,  rendered  him  almost  beside  him- 
self. 

"To  tell  you  the  truth,"  said  Luke,  "I  think 
neither  you  nor  I  have  anything  to  do  with  this 
affair.  You  might  as  well  agitate  yourself  about 
Miss  Romer's  marriage  with  Dangelis!  Girls  must 
manage  these  little  problems  for  themselves.  After 
iall,  it  doesn't  really  matter  much,  one  way  or  the 
other.  What  they  want,  is  to  be  married.  The 
person  they  choose  is  quite  a  secondary  thing.  We 
have  to  learn  to  regard  all  these  little  incidents  as 
of  but  small  importance,  my  good  sir,  as  our  world 
sweeps  round  the  sun!" 

"The  sun  —  the  sun!"  cried  Clavering,  with  dif- 
ficulty restraining  himself.  "What  has  the  sun  to 
io  with  it?  You  are  too  fond  of  bringing  in  your 
suns  and  your  planets,  Andersen.  This  trick  of 
i^ours  of  shelving  the  difficulties  of  life,  by  pretending 
^'ou're  somehow  superior  to  them  all,  is  a  habit  I 
idvise  you  to  give  up!  It's  cheap.  It's  vulgar. 
,t  grows  tiresome  after  a  time." 

Luke's  only  reply  to  this  was  a  sweet  smile;    and 
ihe   two    were    wedged    so    closely    together   that    the 

iest  was  compelled  to  notice  the  abnormal   white- 

ss  and  regularity  of  the  young  man's  teeth. 

I  confess  to  you,"  continued  Luke,  with  an  air 
f  unruffled  detachment,  as  if  they  had  been  dis- 
ussing  the  tint  of  a  flower  or  the  marks  upon  a 
utterfly's   wing,   "I  have  often   wondered  what  the 


530  WOOD  AND   STONE 

relations  really  are  between  Mr.  Romer  and  Miss 
Traffic;  but  that  is  the  sort  of  question  which,  as 
Sir  Thomas  Browne  would  say,  lends  itself  to  a 
wide  solution." 

"Romer  and  Prosperity!"  "Wone  and  Justice!" 
yelled  the  opposing  factions. 

"Our  pretty  Gladys'  dear  parent,"  continued  the 
incorrigible  youth,  completely  disregarding  the  fact 
that  his  companion,  speechless  with  indignation,  was 
desperately  endeavouring  to  extricate  himself  from 
the  press,  '  seems  born  under  a  particularly  lucky  star. 
I  notice  that  every  attempt  which  people  make  to 
thwart  him  comes  to  nothing.  That's  what  I  admire 
about  him:  he  seems  to  move  forward  to  his  end 
like  an  inexorable  fate." 

"Rubbish!"  ejaculated  tihe  priest,  turning  his 
angry  face  once  more  towards  his  provoking  rival. 
"Fiddlesticks  and  rubbish!  The  man  is  a  man,  like 
the  rest  of  us,  I  only  pray  Heaven  he's  going  tc 
lose  this  election!" 

"Under  a  lucky  star,"  reiterated  the  stone-carver 
"I  wish  I  knew,"  he  added  pensively,  "what  his  stai 
is.     Probably  Jupiter!" 

"Wone  and  Liberty!"  "Wone  and  the  Rights  OJ 
the  People!"  roared  the  crowd. 

"Wone  and  God's  Vengeance!"  answered,  in  ar 
indescribably  bitter  tone,  a  new  and  different  voice 
Luke  pressed  his  companion's  arm.  l 

"Did  you  hear  that?"  he  whispered  eagerly 
"That's  Philip.  Who  would  have  thought  he'd  hav 
been  here?    He's  an  anarchist,  you  know."  ! 

Clavering,  who  was  taller  than  his  companion' 
caught  sight  of  the   candidate's    son.     Philip's  coun 


I 


vox   POPULI  531 

tenance  was  livid  with  excitement,  and  his  arms  were 
raised  as  if  actually  invoking  the  Heavens. 

"Silly  fool!  muttered  Luke.  "He  talks  of  God  as 
glibly  as  any  of  his  father's  idiotic  friends.  But 
perhaps  he  was  mocking!  I  thought  I  detected  a 
tang  of  irony  in  his  tone." 

"Most  of  you  unbelievers  cry  upon  God  when  the 
real  crisis  comes,"  remarked  the  priest.  "But  I  like 
Philip  Wone.  I  respect  him.  He,  at  least,  takes  his 
convictions  seriously." 

"I  believe  you  fancy  in  your  heart  that  some 
miracle  is  going  to  be  worked,  to  punish  my  worthy 
employer,"  observed  Luke.  "But  I  assure  you, 
you're  mistaken.  In  this  world  the  only  way  our 
Mr.  Romers  are  brought  low  is  by  being  out-matched 
on  their  own  ground.  He  has  a  lucky  star;  but  other 
people"  —  this  was  added  in  a  low,  significant  tone  — 
"other  people  may  possibly  have  stars  still  more 
lucky." 

At  this  moment  the  cheering  and  shouting  became 
deafening.  Some  new  and  important  event  had  evi- 
dently occurred.  Both  men  turned  and  glanced  up 
at  the  stucco-fronted  edifice  that  served  Yeoborough 
as  a  city-hall.  The  balcony  had  become  so  crowded 
that  it  was  difficult  to  distinguish  individual  figures; 
but  there  was  a  general  movement  there,  and  people 
were  talking  and  gesticulating  eagerly.  Presently  all 
these  excited  persons  fell  simultaneously  into  silence, 
and  an  attitude  of  intense  expectation.  The  crowd 
below  caught  the  thrill  of  their  expectancy,  and  with 
upturned  faces  and  eager  eyes,  waited  the  event. 
There  was  a  most  formidable  hush  over  the  whole 
sea  of  human  heads;    and  even  the  detached  Luke 


532  WOOD   AND   STONE 

felt  his  heart  beating  in  tune  to  the  general  ten- 
sion. 

In  the  midst  of  this  impressive  silence  the  burly 
figure  of  the  sheriff  of  the  parliamentary  district 
made  his  way  slowly  to  the  front  of  the  balcony. 
With  him  came  the  two  candidates,  each  accompan- 
ied by  a  lady,  and  grouped  themselves  on  either  side 
of  him.  The  sheriff  standing  erect,  with  a  sheet  of 
paper  in  his  hand,  saluted  the  assembled  people,  and 
proceeded  to  announce,  in  simple  stentorian  words, 
the  result  of  the  poll. 

Clavering  had  been  stricken  dumb  with  amazement 
to  observe  that  the  lady  by  Mr.  Romer's  side  was 
not  Mrs.  Romer,  as  he  had  thoughtlessly  assumed  it 
would  be,  but  Gladys  herself,  exquisitely  dressed,  and 
looking,  in  her  high  spirits  and  excitement,  more 
lovely  than  he  had  ever  seen  her. 

Her  fair  hair,  drawn  back  from  her  head  beneath  a 
shady  Gainsborough  hat,  shone  like  gold  in  the  sun- 
shine. Her  cheeks  were  flushed,  and  their  delicate 
rose-bloom  threw  into  beautiful  relief  the  pallor  of 
her  brow  and  neck.  Her  tall  girlish  figure  looked 
soft  and  arresting  amid  the  black-coated  politicians 
who  surrounded  her.     Her  eyes  were  brilliant. 

Contrasted  with  this  splendid  apparition  at  Mr. 
Romer's  side,  the  faded  primness  of  the  good  spouse 
of  the  Christian  Candidate  seemed  pathetic  and  gro- 
tesque. Mrs.  Wone,  in  her  stiff  black  dress  and 
old-fashioned  hat,  looked  as  though  she  were  attend- 
ing a  funeral.  Nor  was  the  appearance  of  her  hus- 
band much  more  impressive  or  imposing. 

Mr.  Romer,  with  his  beautiful  daughter's  hand 
upon   his  arm,   looked  as  noble  a  specimen   of  sage 


vox  POPULI  533 

authority  and  massive  triumph,  as  any  of  that  as- 
sembled crowd  were  likely  to  see  in  a  life-time.  A 
spasmodic  burst  of  cheering  was  interrupted  by 
vigorous  hisses  and  cries  of  "Hush!  hush!  Let  the 
gentleman  speak!" 

Lifting  his  hand  with  an  appropriate  air  of  grave 
solemnity,  the  sheriff  proceeded  to  read:  "Result  of 
the  Election  in  this  Parliamentary  Division  —  Mr. 
George  Wone,  seven  thousand  one  hundred  and  fifty 
nine!  Mr.  Mortimer  Romer,  nine  thousand  eight 
hundred  and  sixty -one!  I  therefore  declare  Mr. 
Mortimer  Romer  duly  elected." 

A  burst  of  incredible  cheering  followed  this  procla- 
mation, in  the  midst  of  which  the  groans  and  hisses 
of  the  defeated  section  were  completely  drowned. 
The  cheering  was  so  tremendous  and  the  noisy  re- 
action after  the  hours  of  expectancy  so  immense,  that 
it  was  difficult  to  catch  a  word  of  what  either  the 
successful  or  the  unsuccessful  candidate  said,  as 
they  made  their  accustomed  valedictory  speeches. 

Clavering  and  Luke  were  swept  far  apart  from 
one  another  in  the  mad  confusion;  and  it  was  well 
for  them  both,  perhaps,  that  they  were;  for  before 
the  speeches  were  over,  or  the  persons  on  the  balcony 
had   disappeared   into    the   building,    a   very    strange 

i  and  disconcerting  event  took  place. 

The  unfortunate  young  Philip,  who  had  received 
the  announcement  of  his  father's  defeat  as  a  man 
might  receive  a  death-sentence,  burst  into  a  piercing 

jand   resounding   cry,    which   was  clearly   audible,   not 

jonly  to  those  immediately  about  him,  but  to  every 
one  of  the  ladies   and  gentlemen   assembled   on   the 

I  balcony.     There  is  no  need  to  repeat  in  this  place 


1 


534  WOOD  AND  STONE 

the  words  which  the  unhappy  young  man  hurled  at 
Mr.  Romer  and  his  daughter.  Suffice  it  to  say  that 
they  were  astounding  in  their  brutality  and  grossness. 

As  soon  as  he  had  uttered  them,  Philip  sank  down 
upon  the  ground,  in  the  miserable  convulsions  of 
some  species  of  epileptic  fit.  The  tragic  anxiety  of 
poor  Mrs.  Wone,  who  had  not  only  heard  his  words, 
but  seen  his  collapse,  broke  up  the  balcony  party  in 
disorder. 

Such  is  human  nature,  that  though  not  one  of  the 
aristocratic  personages  there  assembled,  believed  for 
a  moment  that  Pliilip  was  anything  but  a  madman; 
still,  the  mere  weight  of  such  ominous  words,  though 
flung  at  random  and  by  one  out  of  his  senses,  had 
an  appreciable  effect  upon  them.  It  was  noticed 
that  one  after  another  they  drew  away  from  the 
two  persons  thus  challenged;  and  this,  combined 
with  the  movement  about  the  agitated  Mrs.  Wone, 
soon  left  the  father  and  daughter,  the  girl  clinging  to 
her  parent's  arm,  completely  isolated. 

Before  he  led  Gladys  away,  however,  Mr.  Romer 
turned  a  calm  and  apparently  unruffled  face  upon  the 
scene  below.  Luke,  who,  it  may  be  well  believed, 
had  missed  nothing  of  the  subtler  aspects  of  the 
situation,  was  so  moved  by  the  man's  imperturbable 
serenity  that  he  caught  himself  on  the  point  of 
raising  an  admiring  and  congratulatory  shout.  He 
stopped  himself  in  time,  however;  and  in  place  of 
acclaiming  the  father,  did  all  he  could  to  catch  the 
eye  of  the  daughter. 

In  this  he  was  unsuccessful;  for  the  attention  of 
Gladys,  during  the  brief  moment  in  which  she  fol- 
lowed   Mr.    Romer's    glance    over   the    heads    of    the 


vox  POPULI  535 

people,  was  fixed  upon  the  group  of  persons  who 
surrounded  the  prostrate  Philip.  Among  these  persons 
Luke  now  recognized,  and  doubtless  the  girl  had 
recognized  too,  the  figure  of  the  vicar  of  Nevilton. 

Luke  apostrophized  his  rival  with  an  ejaculation 
of  mild  contempt.  "A  good  man,  that  poor  priest," 
he  muttered,  "but  a  most  unmitigated  fool!  As  to 
Romer,  I  commend  him!  But  I  think  I've  put  a 
spoke  in  the  wheel  of  his  good  fortune,  all  the  same, 
in  spite  of  the  planet  Jupiter!" 


CHAPTER   XXI 
CAESAR'S  QUARRY 

MR.  ROMER'S  victory  in  the  election  was 
attended  by  a  complete  lull  in  the  political 
world  of  Nevilton.  Nothing  but  an  un- 
avoidable and  drastic  crisis,  among  the  ruling  circles 
of  the  country,  could  have  precipitated  this  for- 
midable struggle  in  the  middle  of  the  holiday-time; 
and  as  soon  as  the  contest  was  over,  the  general  re- 
laxation of  the  season  made  itself  doubly  felt. 

This  lull  in  the  political  arena  seemed  to  extend 
itself  into  the  sphere  of  private  and  individual 
emotion,  in  so  far  as  the  persons  of  our  drama  were 
concerned.  The  triumphant  quarry-owner  rested 
from  his  labors  under  the  pleasant  warmth  of  the 
drowsy  August  skies;  and  as,  in  the  old  Homeric 
Olympus,  a  relapse  into  lethargy  of  the  wielder 
of  thunder-bolts  was  attended  by  a  cessation  of 
earthly  strife,  so  in  the  Nevilton  world,  the  ele- 
ments of  discord  and  opposition  fell,  during  this 
siesta  of  the  master  of  Leo's  Hill,  into  a  state  of 
quiescent  inertia. 

But  though  the  gods  might  sleep,  and  the  people 
might  relax  and  play,  the  watchful  unwearied  fates 
spun  on,  steadily  and  in  silence,  their  ineluctable 
threads. 

The  long  process  of  "carrying  the  corn"  was  over 
at     last,     and     night     by     night     the     magic-burdened 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  537 

moon  grew  larger  and  redder  above  the  misty  stubble- 
fields. 

The  time  drew  near  for  the  reception  of  the  suc- 
cessful candidate's  daughter  into  the  historic  church 
of  the  country  over  which  he  was  now  one  of  the 
accredited  rulers.  A  few  more  drowsy  sunshine- 
drugged  days  remained  to  pass,  and  the  baptism 
of  Gladys  —  followed,  a  week  later,  by  the  formal 
imposition  of  episcopal  hands  —  would  be  the  signal 
for  the  departure  of  August  and  the  beginning  of 
the  fall  of  the  leaves. 

The  end  of  the  second  week  in  September  had  been 
selected  for  the  double  marriage,  partly  because  it 
synchronized  with  the  annual  parish  feast-day,  and 
partly  because  it  supplied  Ralph  Dangelis  with  an 
excuse  for  carrying  ofiF  his  bride  incontinently  to  New 
York  by  one  of  his  favourite  boats. 

Under  the  quiet  surface  of  this  steadily  flowing 
flood  of  destiny,  which  seemed,  just  then,  to  be 
casting  a  drowning  narcotic  spell  upon  all  concerned, 
certain  deep  and  terrible  misgivings  troubled  not  a 
few  hearts. 

It  may  be  frequently  noticed  by  those  whose  in- 
terest it  is  to  watch  the  strange  occult  harmonies  be- 
tween the  smallest  human  dramas  and  their  elemental 
accomplices,  that  at  these  peculiar  seasons  when 
Nature  seems  to  pause  and  draw  in  her  breath,  men 
and  women  find  it  hard  to  use  or  assert  their  normal 
powers  of  resistance.  The  planetary  influences  seem 
nearer  earth  than  usual;  —  nearer,  with  the  apparent 
nearness  of  the  full  tide-drawing  moon  and  the 
heavy  scorching  sun ;  —  and  for  those  more  sensitive 
souls,    whose    nerves    are   easily    played    upon,    there 


538  AYOOD   AND   STONE 

is  produced  a  certain  curious  sense  of  lying  back 
upon  fate,  with  arms  helplessly  outspread,  and  wills 
benumbed  and  passive. 

But  though  some  such  condition  as  this  had 
narcotized  all  overt  resistance  to  the  destiny  in  store 
for  her  in  the  heart  of  Lacrima,  it  cannot  be  said 
that  the  Italian's  mind  was  free  from  an  appalling 
shadow.  Whether  by  reason  of  a  remote  spark 
of  humanity  in  him,  or  out  of  subtle  fear  lest  by  any 
false  move  he  should  lose  his  prey,  or  because  of 
some  diplomatic  and  sagacious  advice  received  from 
his  brother-in-law,  Mr.  John  Goring  had,  so  far,  con- 
ducted himself  extremely  wisely  towards  his  pros- 
pective wife,  leaving  her  entirely  untroubled  by  any 
molestations,  and  never  even  seeing  her  except  in  the 
presence  of  other  people.  How  far  this  unwonted 
restraint  was  agreeable  to  the  nature  of  the  farmer, 
was  a  secret  concealed  from  all,  except  perhaps  from 
his  idiot  protege,  the  only  human  being  in  Nevilton 
to  whom  the  unattractive  man  ever  confided  his 
thoughts. 

Lacrima  had  one  small  and  incidental  consolation 
in  feeling  that  she  had  been  instrumental  in  sending 
to  a  home  for  the  feeble-minded,  the  unfortunate 
child  of  the  gamekeeper  of  Auber  Lake.  In  this 
single  particular,  Gladys  had  behaved  exceptionally 
well,  and  the  news  that  came  of  the  girl's  steady 
progress  in  the  direction  of  sanity  and  happiness 
afforded  some  fitful  gleam  of  light  in  the  obscurity 
that  surrounded  the  Pariah's  soul. 

The  nature  of  this  intermittent  gleam,  its  deep 
mysterious  strength  drawn  from  spiritual  sources, 
helped    to    throw   a   certain    sad   and   pallid   twilight 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  539 

over  her  ordained  sacrifice.  This  also  she  felt  was 
undertaken,  like  her  visit  to  Auber  Lake,  for  the  sake 
of  an  imprisoned  and  fettered  spirit.  If  by  means  of 
such  self-immolation  her  friend  of  Dead  Man's  Lane 
would  be  liberated  from  his  servitude  and  set  per- 
manently upon  his  feet,  her  submission  would  not 
be  in  vain. 

She  had  come  once  more  to  feel  as  though  the  im- 
pending event  were,  as  far  as  she  was  concerned,  a 
sort  of  final  death-sentence.  The  passing  fantasy, 
that  in  a  momentary  distortion  of  her  mind  had 
swept  over  her  of  the  new  life  it  might  mean  to  have 
children  of  her  own,  even  though  born  of  this  un- 
natural union,  had  not  approached  again  the  troubled 
margin  of  her  spirit. 

Even  the  idea  of  escaping  the  Romers  was  only 
vaguely  present.  She  would  escape  more  than  the 
Romers;  she  would  escape  the  whole  miserable  coil  of 
Ithis  wretched  existence,  if  the  death  she  anticipated 
jfell  upon  her;  for  death,  and  nothing  less  than 
death,  seemed  the  inevitable  circumference  of  the 
iiron  circle  that  was  narrowing  in  upon  her. 

Had  those  two  strange  phantoms  that  we  have 
seen  hovering  over  Nevilton  churchyard,  representing 
in  their  opposite  ways  the  spiritual  powers  of  the 
place,  been  able  to  survey  —  as  who  could  deny  they 
might  be  able?  —  the  fatal  stream  which  was  now 
bearing  the  Pariah  forward  to  the  precipice,  they 
Would  have  been,  in  their  divers  tempers,  struck 
fenth  delight  and  consternation  at  the  spectacle  pre- 
?ented  to  them.  There  was  more  in  this  spectacle, 
t  must  be  admitted,  to  bring  joy  into  the  heart  of 
I  goblin   than    into   that   of   an  angel.     Coincidence, 


I 


540  WOOD   AND   STONE 

casualty,  destiny  —  all  seemed  working    together    to 
effect  the  unfortunate  girl's  destruction. 

The  fact  that,  by  the  recovery  of  his  brother,  the 
astute  Luke  Andersen,  the  only  one  of  all  the  Nevil- 
ton  circle  capable  of  striking  an  effective  blow  in 
her  defence,  had  been  deprived  of  all  but  a  very 
shadowy  interest  in  what  befell,  seemed  an  especially 
sinister  accident.  Equally  unfortunate  was  the  luck- 
less chance  that  at  this  critical  movement  had  led 
the  diplomatic  Mr.  Taxater  to  see  fit  to  prolong  his 
stay  in  London.  Mr.  Quincunx  was  characteristically 
helpless.  James  Andersen  seemed,  since  the  recovery 
of  his  normal  mind,  to  have  subsided  like  a  person 
under  some  restraining  vow.  Lacrima  was  a  little 
surprised  that  he  made  no  attempt  to  see  her  or  to 
communicate  with  her.  She  could  only  suppose  she 
had  indelibly  hurt  him,  by  her  rejection  of  his  quixotic 
offers,  on  their  way  back  from  Hullaway. 

Thus  to  any  ordinary  glance,  cast  upon  the  field 
of  events  as  they  were  now  arranging  themselves,  it 
would  have  looked  as  though  the  Italian's  escape  from 
the  fate  hanging  over  her  were  as  improbable  as  it 
would  be  for  a  miracle  to  intervene  to  save  her. 

In  spite  of  the  wild  threat  flung  out  by  Mr.  Claver- 
ing  in  his  sudden  anger  as  he  waited  with  Luke  in  the 
Yeoborough  street,  the  vicar  of  Nevilton  made  no 
attempt  to  interfere.  Whether  he  really  managed  to 
persuade  his  conscience  that  all  was  well,  or  whether 
he  came  to  the  conclusion  that  without  some  initiative 
from  the  Italian  it  would  be  useless  to  meddle,  not 
the  most  subtle  psychologist  could  say.  The  fact 
remained  that  the  only  step  he  took  in  the  matter 
was  to  assure  himself  that  the  girl's  nominal  Catholi- 


1 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  541 

cism  had  so  far  lapsed  into  indifference,  that  she  was 
Ukely  to  raise  no  objection  to  a  ceremony  according 
to  Anglican  ritual. 

The  whole  pitiful  situation,  indeed,  offered  only 
one  more  terrible  and  branding  indictment,  against 
the  supine  passivity  of  average  human  nature  in  the 
presence  of  unspeakable  wrongs.  The  power  and 
authority  of  the  domestic  system,  according  to  which 
the  real  battle-field  of  wills  takes  place  out  of  sight  of 
the  public  eye,  renders  it  possible  for  this  inertia  of 
the  ordinary  human  crowd  to  cloak  itself  under  a 
moral  dread  of  scandal,  and  under  the  fear  of  any 
drastic  breach  of  the  uniformity  of  social  usage. 

A  visitor  from  Mars  or  Saturn  might  have  sup- 
posed, that  in  circumstances  of  this  kind,  every 
decent-thinking  person  in  the  village  would  have 
rushed  headlong  to  the  episcopal  throne,  and  called 
loudly  for  spiritual  mandates  to  stop  the  outrage. 
Where  was  the  delegated  Power  of  God  —  so  the  for- 
lorn shadows  of  the  long-evicted  Cistercians  might 
be  imagined  crying  —  whose  absolute  authority  could 
be  appealed  to  in  face  of  every  worldly  force?  What 
was  the  tender-souled  St.  Catharine  doing,  in  her 
Paradisiac  rest,  that  she  could  remain  so  passively  in- 
different to  such  monstrous  and  sacrilegious  use  of 
her  sacred  building?  Was  it  that  such  transactions 
as  this,  should  be  carried  through,  under  its  very 
shelter,  that  the  gentle  spirits  who  guarded  the  Holy 
Rood  had  made  of  Nevilton  Mount  their  sacred 
resting-place?  Must  the  whole  fair  tradition  of  the 
spot  remain  dull,  dormant,  dumb,  while  the  devotees 
of  tyranny  worked  their  arbitrary  will  —  "and  nothing 
said"? 


542  WOOD   AND   STONE 

Such  imaginary  appeals,  so  fantastic  in  the  utter- 
ance, were  indeed,  as  that  large  August-moon  rose 
night  by  night  upon  the  stubble-fields,  far  too  re- 
mote from  Nevilton's  common  routine  to  enter  the 
heads  of  any  of  that  simple  flock.  The  morning 
mists  that  diffused  themselves,  like  filmy  dream- 
figures,  over  the  watchful  promontory  of  Leo's  Hill, 
were  as  capable  as  any  of  these  villagers  of  crying  aloud 
that  wrong  was  being  done. 

The  loneliness  in  the  midst  of  which  Lacrima 
moved  on  her  way  —  groping,  as  her  enemy  had 
taunted  her  with  doing,  so  helplessly  with  her  wistful 
hands  —  was  a  loneliness  so  absolute  that  it  some- 
times seemed  to  her  as  if  she  were  already  literally 
dead  and  buried.  Now  and  then,  with  a  pallid 
phosphorescent  glimmer  like  the  gleam  of  a  corpse- 
light,  the  mortal  dissolution  of  all  the  ties  that 
bound  her  to  earthly  interests,  itself  threw  a  fitful 
illumination   over   her   consciousness. 

But  Mr.  Romer  had  over-reached  himself  in  his 
main  purpose.  The  moral  disintegration  which  he 
looked  for,  and  which  the  cynical  apathy  of  Mr. 
Quincunx  encouraged,  had,  by  extending  itself  to 
every  nerve  of  her  spirit,  rounded  itself  off,  as  it 
were,  full  circle,  and  left  her  in  a  mental  state  rather 
beyond  both  good  and  evil,  than  delivered  up  to  the 
latter  as  opposed  to  the  former.  The  infernal  power 
might  be  said  to  have  triumphed;  but  it  could 
scarcely  be  said  to  have  triumphed  over  a  living 
soul.  It  had  rather  driven  her  soul  far  off,  far  away 
from  all  these  contests,  into  some  mysterious 
translunar  region,  where  all  these  distinctions  lapsed 
and  merged. 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  543 

Leo's  Hill  itself  had  never  crouched  in  more  taci- 
turn intentness  than  it  did  under  that  sweltering 
August  sunshine,  which  seemed  to  desire,  in  the 
gradual  scorching  of  the  green  slopes,  to  reduce  even 
the  outward  skin  of  the  monster  to  an  approximate 
conformity  with  its  tawny  entrails. 

Mr.  Taxater's  departure  from  the  scene  at  this 
juncture  was  not  only,  little  as  she  knew  it,  a  loss  of 
support  to  Lacrima,  it  was  also  a  very  serious  blow  to 
Vennie  Seldom. 

The  priest  in  Yeoborough,  who  at  her  repeated 
request  had  already  begun  to  give  her  surreptitious 
lessons  in  the  Faith,  was  not  in  any  sense  fitted  to 
be  a  young  neophyte's  spiritual  adviser.  He  was 
fat.  He  was  gross.  He  was  lethargic.  He  was  in- 
different. He  also  absolutely  refused  to  receive  her 
into  the  Church  without  her  mother's  sanction.  This 
refusal  was  especially  troublesome  to  Vennie.  She 
knew  enough  of  her  mother  to  know  that  while  it 
was  her  nature  to  resist  blindly  and  obstinately  any 
deviation  from  her  will,  when  once  a  revolt  was  an 
established  fact  she  would  resign  herself  to  it  with  a 
surprising  equanimity.  To  ask  Valentia  for  per- 
mission to  be  received  into  the  Church  would  mean 
a  most  violent  and  distressing  scene.  To  announce 
to  her  that  she  had  been  so  received,  would  mean 
nothing  but  melancholy  and  weary  acquiesence. 

She  felt  deeply  hurt  at  Mr.  Taxater's  desertion  of 
her  at  this  moment  of  all  moments.  Tt  was  incred- 
ible that  it  was  really  necessary  for  him  to  be  so 
long  in  town.  As  a  rule  he  never  left  the  Gables 
during  the  month  of  August.  His  conduct  puzzled 
and  troubled  her.     Did  he  care  nothing  whether  she 


544  WOOD   AND   STONE 

became  a  Catholic  or  not?  Were  his  lessons  mere 
casual  by-play,  to  fill  up  his  spare  hours  in  an  in- 
teresting and  pleasant  diversion?  Was  he  really  the 
faithful  friend  he  called  himself?  Not  only  had  he 
absented  himself,  but  he  had  done  so  without  sending 
her  a  single  word. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  it  was  extremely  rare  for  Mr. 
Taxater  to  write  a  letter,  even  to  his  nearest  friends, 
except  under  the  stress  of  theological  controversy. 
But  Vennie  knew  nothing  of  this.  She  simply  felt 
hurt  and  injured;  as  though  the  one  human  being, 
upon  whom  she  had  reposed  her  trust,  had  deserted 
and  betrayed  her.  He  had  spoken  so  tenderly,  so 
affectionately  to  her,  too,  during  their  last  walk  to- 
gether, before  the  unfortunate  encounter  with  James 
Andersen  in  the  Athelston  porch! 

It  is  true  that  his  attitude  over  that  matter  of 
Andersen's  insanity,  and  also  in  the  affair  of  Lacrima's 
marriage,  had  a  little  shocked  and  disconcerted  her. 
He  had  bluntly  refused  to  take  her  into  his  confidence, 
and  she  felt  instinctively  that  the  conversation  with 
Luke,  from  which  she  had  been  so  curtly  dismissed, 
was  of  a  kind  that  would  have  hurt  and  surprised  her. 

It  seemed  unworthy  of  him  to  absent  himself  from 
Nevilton,  just  at  the  moment  when,  as  she  felt  certain 
in  her  heart,  some  grievous  outrage  was  being  com- 
mitted. She  had  learned  quickly  enough  of  Andersen's 
recovery;  but  nothing  she  could  learn  either  lessened 
her  terrible  apprehension  about  Lacrima,  or  gave  her 
the  least  hint  of  a  path  she  could  follow  to  do  any- 
thing on  the  Italian's  behalf. 

She  made  a  struggle  once  to  see  the  girl  and  to 
talk  to  her.     But  she  came  away  from  the  hurried 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  545 

interview  as  perplexed  and  troubled  in  her  mind  as 
ever.  Lacrinia  had  maintained  an  obstinate  and  im- 
penetrable reserve.  Vennie  made  up  her  mind  that  she 
would  postpone  for  the  present  her  own  religious 
revolt,  and  devote  herself  to  keeping  a  close  and  care- 
ful watch  upon  events  in  Nevilton. 

Mr.  Clavering's  present  attitude  rendered  her  pro- 
foundly unhappy.  The  pathetic  overtures  she  had 
made  to  him  recently,  with  a  desperate  hope  of  re- 
newing their  friendship  on  a  basis  that  would  be 
unaffected  even  by  her  change  of  creed,  had  seemed 
entirely  unremarked  by  the  absorbed  clergyman. 
She  could  not  help  brooding  sometimes,  with  a  feeling 
of  wretched  humiliation,  over  the  brusqueness  and 
rudeness  which  characterized  his  manner  towards  her. 

She  recalled,  more  often  than  the  priest  would 
have  cared  to  have  known,  that  pursuit  of  theirs,  of 
the  demented  Andersen,  and  how  in  his  annoyance 
and  confusion  he  had  behaved  to  her  in  a  fashion 
not  only  rough  but  positively  unkind. 

It  was  clear  that  he  was  growing  more  and  more 
slavishly  infatuated  with  Gladys;  and  Vennie  could 
only  pray  that  the  days  might  pass  quickly  and  the 
grotesque  blasphemy  of  the  confirmation  service  be 
carried  through  and  done  with,  so  that  the  evil  spell 
of  her  presence  should  be  lifted  and  broken. 

Prayer  indeed  —  poor  little  forlorn  saint!  —  was  all 
that  was  left  to  her,  outside  her  mother's  exacting 
affection,  and  she  made  a  constant  and  desperate  use 
of  it.  Only  the  little  painted  wooden  image,  in  her 
white-washed  room,  a  pathetic  reproduction  of  the 
famous  Nuremburg  Madonna,  could  have  betrayed 
how  long  were  the   hours  in  which  she  gave  herself 


546  WOOD   AND   STOXE 

up  to  these  passionate  appeals.  She  prayed  for 
Clavering  in  that  shy  heart-breaking  manner  —  never 
whispering  his  name,  even  to  the  ears  of  Our  Lady, 
but  always  calling  him  "He"  and  "Him"  — in  which 
girls  are  inclined  to  pray  for  the  man  to  whom  they] 
have  sacrificed  their  peace.  She  prayed  desperately] 
for  Lacrima,  that  at  the  last  moment,  contrary  to  allj 
hope,  some  intervention  might  arrive. 

Thus    it    came    about,    that    beneath    the    roofs    ofj 
Nevilton  —  for     neither     James     Andersen     nor     Mr.l 
Quincunx    were    "praying    men" — only    one    voice) 
was  lifted  up,   the  voice  of  the  last  of  the  old  race 
of  the  place's   rulers,   to   protest   against  the  flowing 
forward  to  its  fatal  end,  of  this  evil  tide. 

Nevertheless,  things  moved  steadily  and  irresistibly] 
on;  and  it  seemed  as  though  it  were  as  improbable 
that  those  shimmering  mists  which  every  evening 
crept  up  the  sides  of  Leo's  Hill  should  endure  the 
heat  of  the  August  noons,  as  that  the  prayers  of  this 
frail  child  should  change  the  course  of  ordainec 
destiny. 

If  none  but  her  little  painted  Madonna  knew  ho^ 
passionate  were  Vennie's  spiritual  struggles;  not  evei 
that  other  Vennie,  of  the  long-buried  royal  court 
whose  mournful  nun's  eyes  looked  out  upon  the  great 
entrance-hall,  knew  what  turbulent  thoughts  anc 
anxieties  possessed  the  soul  of  Gladys  Romer. 

Was  Mr.  Taxater  right  in  the  formidable  hint  he 
had  given  the  young  stone-carver,  as  to  the  result 
of  his  amour  with  his  employer's  daughter .'^  Was 
Gladys  not  only  the  actual  mistress  of  Luke,  but  the 
prospective  mother  of  a  child  of  their  strange  love.'* 

Whatever  were  the  fair-haired  girl's  thoughts  and 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  547 

apprehensions,  she  kept  them  rigidly  to  herself;  and 
not  even  Lacrima,  in  her  wildest  imagination,  ever 
dreamed  that  things  had  gone  as  far  as  that.  If  it 
had  chanced  to  be,  as  Mr.  Taxater  supposed,  and 
as  Luke  seemed  willing  to  admit,  Gladys  was  ap- 
parently relying  upon  some  vague  accident  in  the 
course  of  events,  or  upon  some  hidden  scheme  of  her 
own,  to  escape  the  exposure  which  the  truth  of  such 
a  supposition  seemed  to  render  inevitable. 

The  fact  remained  that  she  let  matters  drift  on, 
and  continued  to  prepare  —  in  her  own  fashion  — 
not  only  for  her  reception  into  the  Church  of  England, 
but  for  her  marriage  to  the  wealthy  American. 

Dangelis  was  continually  engaged  now  in  running 
backwards  and  forwards  to  town  on  business  connected 
with  his  marriage;  and  with  a  view  to  making  these 
trips  more  pleasantly  and  conveniently  he  had  ac- 
quired a  smart  touring-car  of  his  own,  which  he  soon 
found  himself  able  to  drive  without  assistance.  The 
pleasure  of  these  excursions,  leading  him,  in  delicious 
solitude,  through  so  many  unvisited  country  places 
and  along  such  historic  roads,  had  for  the  moment 
distracted  his  attention  from  his  art. 

He  rarely  took  Gladys  with  him;  partly  because  he 
regarded  himself  as  still  but  a  learner  in  the  science 
of  driving,  but  more  because  he  felt,  at  this  critical 
moment  of  his  life,  an  extraordinary  desire  to  be  alone 
with  his  own  thoughts.  Most  of  these  thoughts,  it  is 
true,  were  such  as  it  would  not  have  hurt  the  feelings 
of  his  fiancee  to  have  surprised  in  their  passage 
through  his  mind;  but  not  quite  all  of  them.  Ever 
since  the  incident  of  Auber  Lake,  an  incident  which 
threw    the   character   of   his    betrothed    into   no    very 


548  WOOD   AND   STONE 

charming  light,  Dangelis  had  had  his  moments  of 
uneasiness  and  misgiving.  He  could  not  altogether 
conceal  from  himself  that  his  attraction  to  Gladys 
was  rather  of  a  physical  than  of  a  spiritual,  or  even 
of  a  psychic  nature. 

Once  or  twice,  while  the  noble  expanses  of  Salis- 
bury Plain  or  the  New  Forest  thrilled  him  with  a 
pure  dilation  of  soul,  as  he  swept  along  in  the  clear 
air,  he  was  on  the  verge  of  turning  his  car  straight 
to  the  harbour  of  Southampton  and  taking  the  first 
boat  that  offered  itself,  bound  East,  West,  North  or 
South  —  it  mattered  nothing  the  direction !  —  so  that 
an  impassable  gulf  of  free  sea-water  should  separate 
him  forever  from  the  hot  fields  and  woods  of  Nevilton. 

Once,  when  reaching  a  cross-road  point,  where  the 
name  of  the  famous  harbour  stared  at  him  from  a 
sign-post,  he  had  even  gone  so  far  as  to  deviate  to 
the  extent  of  several  miles  from  his  normal  road. 
But  that  intolerable  craving  for  the  girl's  soft-clinging 
arms  and  supple  body,  with  which  she  had  at  last 
succeeded  in  poisoning  the  freedom  of  his  mind,  drew 
him  back  with  the  force  of  a  magnet. 

The  day  at  length  approached,  when,  on  the 
festival  of  his  favorite  saint,  Mr.  Clavering  was  to 
perform  the  ceremony,  to  which  he  had  looked  for- 
ward so  long  and  with  such  varied  feelings.  It  was 
Saturday,  and  on  the  following  morning,  in  a  service 
especially  arranged  to  take  place  privately,  between 
early  celebration  and  ordinary  matins,  Gladys  was 
to  be  baptized. 

Dangelis  had  suddenly  declared  his  intention  of 
making  his  escape  from  a  proceeding  which  to  his 
American  mind  seemed  entirely  uncalled  for,  and  to 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  549 

his  pagan  humour  seemed  not  a  little  grotesque.  He 
had  decided  to  start,  immediately  after  breakfast, 
and  motor  to  London,  this  time  by  way  of  Trow- 
bridge and  Westbury. 

The  confirmation  ceremony,  for  reasons  connected 
with  the  convenience  of  the  Lord  Bishop,  had  been 
finally  fixed  for  the  ensuing  Wednesday,  so  that  only 
two  days  were  destined  to  elapse  between  the  girl's 
reception  into  the  Church,  and  her  admission  to  its 
most  sacred  rites.  Dangelis  was  sufficiently  a  heathen 
to  desire  to  be  absent  from  this  event  also,  though 
he  had  promised  Mr.  Clavering  to  support  his  be- 
trothed on  the  occasion  of  her  first  Communion  on 
the  following  Sunday,  which  would  be  their  last 
Sunday  together  as  unwedded  lovers. 

On  this  occasion,  Gladys  persuaded  him  to  let  her 
ride  by  his  side  a  few  miles  along  the  Yeoborough 
road.  They  had  just  reached  the  bridge  across  the 
railway-line,  about  a  mile  and  a  half  from  the  village, 
when  they  caught  sight  of  Mr.  John  Goring,  returning 
from  an  early  visit  to  the  local  market. 

Gladys  made  the  artist  stop  the  car,  and  she  got 
out  to  speak  to  her  uncle.  After  a  minute  or  two's 
conversation,  she  informed  Dangelis  that  she  would 
return  with  Mr.  Goring  by  the  field-path,  which  left 
the  road  at  that  point  and  followed  the  track  of  the 
railway.  The  American,  obedient  to  her  wish,  set 
his  car  in  motion,  and  waving  her  a  gay  good-bye,  dis- 
appeared swiftly  round  an  adjacent  corner. 

Gladys  and  her  uncle  proceeded  to  walk  slowly 
homeward,  across  the  meadows;  neither  of  them, 
however,  paying  much  attention  to  the  charm  of  the 
way.     In  vain  from  the  marshy  hollows  between  their 


550  WOOD   AND   STONE 

path  and  the  metal  track,  certain  brilliant  clumps  of 
ragged  robin  and  red  rattle  signalled  to  them  to 
pause  and  admire.  Gladys  and  Mr.  Goring  strolled 
forward,  past  these  allurements,  with  a  superb  ab- 
sorption in  their  own  interests. 

"I  can't  think,  uncle,"  Gladys  was  saying,  "how 
it  is  that  you  can  go  on  in  the  way  you're  doing; 
you,  a  properly  engaged  person,  and  not  seeing  any- 
thing of  your  young  lady?" 

The  farmer  laughed.  "Ah!  my  dear,  but  what 
matter.''  I  shall  see  her  soon  enough;  all  I  want  to, 
may-be." 

"But  most  engaged  people  like  to  see  a  little  of 
one  another  before  they're  married,  don't  they, 
uncle  "^  I  know  Ralph  would  be  quite  mad  if  he 
couldn't  see  me." 

"But,  my  pretty,  this  is  quite  a  different  case. 
When  Bert  and  I" — he  spoke  of  the  idiot  as  if 
they  had  been  comrades,  instead  of  master  and 
servant  —  "have  bought  a  new  load  of  lop-ears,  we 
never  tease  'em  or  fret  'em  before  w^e  get  'em  home." 

"But  Lacrima  isn't  a  rabbit!"  cried  Gladys  im- 
patiently; "she's  a  girl  like  me,  and  wants  what  all 
girls  want,  to  be  petted  and  spoilt  a  little  before 
she's  plunged  into   marriage." 

"She  didn't  strike  me  as  wanting  anything  of  that 
kind,  when  I  made  up  to  her  in  our  parlour,"  replied 
Mr.  Goring. 

"Oh  you  dear  old  stupid!"  cried  his  niece,  "can't 
you  understand  that's  what  we're  all  like?  We  all 
put  on  airs,  and  have  fancies,  and  look  cross;  but 
we  want  to  be  petted  all  the  same.  We  want  it  all 
the  more!" 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  551 

"I  reckon  I'd  better  leave  well  alone  all  the  same, 
just  at  present,"  observed  the  farmer.  "If  I  was  to 
go  stroking  her  and  making  up  to  her,  while  she's 
on  the  road,  may-be  when  we  got  her  into  the  hutch 
she'd  bite  like  a  weasel." 

"She'd  never  really  bite!"  retorted  his  companion. 
"You  don't  know  her  as  well  as  I  do.  I  tell  you, 
uncle,  she's  got   no  more  spirit  than  a  tame  pigeon." 

"I'm  not  so  sure  of  that,"  said  the  farmer. 

Gladys  flicked  the  grass  impatiently  with  the  end 
of  her  parasol. 

"You  may  take  my  word  for  it,  uncle,"  she  con- 
tinued. "The  whole  thing's  put  on.  It's  all  affec- 
tation and  nonsense.  Do  you  think  she'd  have  agreed 
to  marry  you  if  she  wasn't  ready  for  a  little  fun? 
Of  course  she's  ready!*  She's  only  waiting  for  you  to 
begin.  It  makes  it  more  exciting  for  her,  when  she 
cries  out  and  looks  injured.  That's  the  only  reason 
why  she  does  it.  Lots  of  girls  are  like  that,  you 
know!" 

"Are  they,  my  pretty,  are  they?  'Tis  difficult  to 
tell  that  kind,  may-be,  from  the  other  kind.  But 
I'm  not  a  man  for  too  much  of  these  fancy  ways." 

"You're  not  drawing  back,  uncle,  are  you?"  cried 
Gladys,  in  considerable  alarm. 

"God  darn  me,  no!"  replied  the  farmer.  "I'm 
going  to  carry  this  business  through.  Don't  you  fuss 
yourself.  Only  I  like  doing  these  things  in  my  own 
way  —  dost  understand  me,  my  dear?  -  in  my  own 
way;  and  then,  if  so  be  they  go  wrong,  I  can't  put 
the  blame  on  no  one  else." 

"I  wonder  you  aren't  more  keen,  uncle,"  began 
Gladys    insinuatingly,    following    another    track,    "to 


552  WOOD   AND   STONE 

see  more  of  a  pretty  girl  you're  just  going  to  marry. 
I  don't  believe  3'ou  half  know  how  pretty  she  is! 
I  wish  you  could  see  her  doing  her  hair  in  the 
morning." 

"I  shall  see  her,  soon  enough,  my  lass;  don't 
worry,"  replied  the  farmer. 

"I  should  so  love  to  see  you  give  her  one  kiss," 
murmured  Gladys.  "Of  course,  she'd  struggle  and 
make  a  fuss,  but  she'd  really  be  enjoying  it  all  the 
time." 

"May-be  she  would,  my  pretty,  and  may-be  she 
wouldn't.  I'm  not  one  that  likes  hearing  either 
rabbits  or  maidens  start  the  squealing  game.  It  fair 
gives  me  the  shivers.  Bert,  he  can  stand  it,  but  I 
never  could.  It's  nature,  I  suppose.  A  man  can't 
change  his  nature  no  more  than  a  cow  nor  a  horse." 

"I  can't  understand  you,  uncle,"  observed  Gladys. 
"If  I  were  in  your  place,  I'm  sure  I  shouldn't  be 
satisfied  without  at  least  kissing  the  girl  I  was  going 
to  marry.  I'd  find  some  way  of  getting  round  her, 
however  sulky  she  was.  Oh,  I'm  sure  you  don't  half 
know  how  nice  Lacrima  is  to  kiss!" 

"I  suppose  she  isn't  so  mighty  different,  come  to 
that,"  replied  the  farmer,  "than  any  other  maid.  I 
don't  mind  if  I  give  you  a  kiss,  my  beauty!"  he 
added,  encircling  his  niece  with  an  affectionate  em- 
brace and  kissing  her  flushed  cheek.  "There  —  there! 
Best  let  well  alone,  sweetheart,  and  leave  your  old 
uncle  to  manage  his  own  little  affairs  according  to 
his  own  fashion!" 

But  Gladys  was  not  so  easily  put  off.  She  had 
recourse  to  her  fertile  imagination. 

"You  should  have  heard  what  she  said  to  me  the 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  553 

other  night,  uncle.  You  know  the  way  girls  talk? 
or  you  ought  to,  anyhow!  She  said  she  hoped  you'd 
go  on  being  the  same  simple  fool,  after  you  were 
married.  She  said  she'd  find  it  mighty  easy  to  twist 
you  round  her  finger.  'Why,'  she  said,  *I  can  do 
what  I  like  with  him  now.  He  treats  me  as  if  I 
were  a  high-born  lady  and  he  were  a  mere  common 
man.  I  believe  he's  downright  afraid  of  me!'  That's 
the  sort  of  things  she  says  about  you,  uncle.  She 
thinks  in  her  heart  that  you're  just  a  fool,  a  simple 
frightened  fool!" 

"Darn  her!  she  does,  does  she?"  cried  Mr.  Goring, 
touched  at  last  by  the  serpent's  tongue.  "She  thinks 
I'm  a  fool,  does  she?  Well!  Let  her  have  her  laugh. 
Them  laughs  best  as  laughs  last,  in  my  thinking!" 

"Yes,  she  thinks  you're  a  great  big  silly  fool,  uncle. 
Of  course  its  all  pretence,  her  talk  about  wanting 
you  to  be  like  that;  but  that's  what  she  thinks  you 
are.  What  she'd  really  like  —  only  she  doesn't  say 
so,  even  to  me  —  would  be  for  you  to  catch  her 
suddenly  round  the  waist  and  kiss  her  on  the  mouth, 
and  laugh  at  her  pretendings.  I  expect  she's  waiting 
to  give  you  a  chance  to  do  something  of  that  sort; 
only  you  don't  come  near  her.  Oh,  she  must  think 
you're  a  monstrous  fool!  She  must  chuckle  to  herself 
to  think  what  a  fool  you  are." 

"I'll  teach  her  what  kind  of  a  fool  I  am,"  muttered 
Mr.  Goring,  "when  I've  got  her  to  myself,  up  at  the 
farm.  This  business  of  dangling  after  a  maid's 
apron  strings,  this  kissing  and  cuddling,  don't  suit 
somehow  with  my  nature.  I'm  not  one  of  your 
fancy-courting  ones  and  never  was!" 

"Listen,   uncle!"   said   Gladys    eagerly,  laying    her 


554  WOOD  AND   STONE 

hand  on  his  arm.  "Suppose  I  was  to  take  her  up 
to  Caesar's  Quarry  this  afternoon?  That  would  be  a 
lovely  chance!  You  could  come  strolling  round  about 
four  o'clock.  I'd  be  on  the  watch;  and  before  she 
knew  you  were  there,  I'd  scramble  out,  and  you 
could  climb  down.  She  couldn't  get  away  from  you, 
and  you'd  have  quite  a  nice  little  bit  of  love- 
making." 

Mr.  Goring  paused,  and  prodded  the  ground  with 
the  end  of  his  stick. 

"What  a  little  devil  you  are!"  he  exclaimed. 
"Darn  me  if  this  here  job  isn't  a  queer  business! 
Here  are  you,  putting  yourself  out  and  fussing 
around,  only  for  a  fellow  to  have  what's  due  to  him. 
You  leave  us  alone,  sweetheart,  my  young  lady  and 
me!  I  reckon  we  know  what's  best  for  ourselves, 
without  you  thrusting  your  hand  in." 

"But  you  might  just  walk  up  that  way,  uncle;  it 
isn't  far  over  the  hill.  I'd  give  —  oh,  I  don't  know 
what!  —  to  see  you  two  together.  She  wants  to  be 
teased  a  little,  you  know!  She's  getting  too  proud 
and  self-satisfied  for  anything.  It  would  do  her  ever 
so  much  good  to  be  taught  a  lesson.  It  isn't  much 
to  do,  is  it .5^  Just  to  give  the  girl  you're  going  to 
marry  one  little  kiss?" 

"But  how  do  I  know  you  two  wenches  aren't 
fooling  me,  even  now?"  protested  the  cautious 
farmer.  "  'Tis  just  the  sort  of  maids'  trick  ye  might 
set  out  to  play  upon  a  man.  How  do  I  know  ye 
haven't  put  your  two  darned  little  heads  together 
over  this  job?" 

Gladys  looked  round.  They  were  approaching  the 
Mill  Copse. 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  555 

"Please,  uncle,"  she  cried,  "don't  say  such  things 
to  me.  You  know  I  wouldn't  join  with  anyone 
against  you.  Least  of  all  with  her!  Just  do  as  I 
tell  you,  and  stroll  up  to  Ciesar's  Quarry  about  four 
o'clock.  I  promise  you  faithfully  I  haven't  said  a 
word  to  her  about  it.  Please,  uncle,  be  nice  and 
kind  over  this." 

She  threw  her  arms  round  Mr.  Goring's  neck. 
"You  haven't  done  anything  for  me  for  a  long  time," 
she  murmured  in  her  most  persuasive  tone.  "Do 
you  remember  how  I  used  to  give  you  butterfly- 
kisses  when  I  was  a  little  girl,  and  you  kept  apples 
for  me  in  the  big  loft? 

Mr.  Goring's  nature  may,  or  may  not  have  been, 
as  he  described  it;  it  is  certain  that  the  caresses  and 
cajoleries  of  his  lovely  niece  had  an  instantaneous 
effect  upon  him.  His  slow-witted  suspicions  melted 
completely  under  the  spell  of  her  touch. 

"Well,  my  pretty,"  he  said,  as  they  moved  on, 
under  the  shadowy  trees  of  the  park,  "may-be,  if 
I've  nothing  else  to  do  and  things  seem  quiet,  I'll 
take  a  bit  of  a  walk  this  afternoon.  But  you  mustn't 
count  on  it.  If  I  do  catch  sight  of  'ee,  'round 
Caesar's  way,  I'll  let  'ee  know.  But  'tisn't  a  down- 
right promise,  mind!" 

Gladys  clapped  her  hands.  "You're  a  perfect  love, 
uncle!"  she  cried  jubilantly.  "I  wish  I  were  La- 
crima;    I'd  be  ever,  ever  so  nice  to  you!" 

"Ye  can  be  nice  to  me,  as  'tis,  sweetheart,"  re- 
plied the  farmer.  "You  and  me  have  always  been 
kind  of  fond  of  each  other,  haven't  us?  But  I  reckon 
ye'd  best  be  slipping  off  now,  up  to  your  house.  I 
never  care  greatly  for  meeting  your  father  by   acci- 


I 


550  WOOD  AND   STONE 

dent-like.     He's   one   of   these   sly   ones   that   always 
makes  a  fellow  feel  squeamy  and  leery."  J 

That  afternoon  it  happened  that  the  adventurous 
Luke  had  planned  a  trip  down  to  Weymouth,  with  a 
new    flame    of    his,    a    certain    Polly    Shadow,    whose    , 
parents  kept  a  tobacco-shop  in  Yeoborough.  " 

He  had  endeavoured  to  persuade  his  brother  to 
accompany  them  on  this  little  excursion,  in  the  hope 
that  a  breath  of  sea-air  might  distract  and  refresh 
him;  but  James  had  expressed  his  intention  of  pay- 
ing a  visit  to  his  gentle  restorer,  up  at  Wild  Pine, 
who  was  now  sufficiently  recovered  to  enable  her  to 
sit  out  in  the  shade  of  the  great  trees. 

The  church  clock  had  just  struck  three,  when  James 
Andersen  approached  the  entrance  to  Nevil's  Gully. 

He  had  not  advanced  far  into  the  shadow  of  the 
beeches,  when  he  heard  the  sound  of  voices.  He 
paused,  and  listened.  The  clear  tones  of  Ninsy 
Lintot  were  unmistakeable,  and  he  thought  he  de- 
tected— though  of  this  he  was  not  sure  —  the 
nervous  high-pitched  voice  of  Philip  Wone.  From  the 
direction  of  the  sounds,  he  gathered  that  the  two 
young  people  were  seated  somewhere  on  the  bracken- 
covered  slope  above  the  barton,  where,  as  he  well 
knew,  there  were  several  shady  terraces  overlooking 
the  valley. 

Unwilling  to  plunge  suddenly  into  a  conversation 
that  appeared,  as  far  as  he  could  catch  its  purport, 
to  be  of  considerable  emotional  tension,  Andersen 
cautiously  ascended  the  moss-grown  bank  on  his 
left,  and  continued  his  climb,  until  he  had  reached 
the  crest  of  the  hill.  He  then  followed,  as  silently  as 
he  could,  the  little  grassy  path  between  the  stubble- 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  557 

field    and    the    thickets,    until    he    came    to    the    open 
space  immediately  above  these  fern-covered  terraces. 

Yes,  his  conjecture  had  been  right.  Seated  side 
by  side  beneath  the  tall-waving  bracken,  the  auburn- 
haired  Ninsy  and  her  anarchist  friend  were  engaged 
in  an  absorbing  and  passionate  discussion.  Both  of 
them  were  bare-headed,  and  the  young  man's  hand 
rested  upon  the  motionless  fingers  of  his  companion, 
which  were  clasped  demurely  upon  her  lap.  Philip's 
voice  was  raised  in  intense  and  pitiful  supplication. 

"I'd  care  for  you  day  and  night,"  Andersen  heard 
him  cry.  "I'd  nurse  you  when  you  were  ill,  and 
keep  you  from  every  kind  of  annoyance." 

"But,  Philip  dear,"  the  girl's  voice  answered,  "you 
know  what  the  doctor  said.  He  said  I  mustn't  marry 
on  any  account.  So  even  if  I  had  nothing  against  it, 
it  wouldn't  be  possible  for  us  to  do  this." 

"Ninsy,  Ninsy!"  cried  the  youth  pathetically, 
"don't  you  understand  what  I  mean.?  I  can't  bear 
having  to  say  these  things,  but  you  force  me  to, 
when  you  talk  like  that.  The  doctor  meant  that  it 
would  be  wrong  for  you  to  have  children,  and  he  took 
if  for  granted  that  you'd  never  find  anyone  ready 
to  live  with  you  as  I'd  live  with  you.  It  would  only 
be  a  marriage  in  name.  I  mean  it  would  only  be  a 
marriage  in  name  in  regard  to  children.  It  would  be 
a  real  marriage  to  me,  it  would  be  heaven  to  me,  to 
live  side  by  side  with  you,  and  no  one  able  any  more 
to  come  between  us!  I  can't  realize  such  happiness. 
It  makes  me  feel  dizzy  even  to  think  of  it!" 

Ninsy  unclasped  her  hands,  and  gently  repulsing 
him,  remained  buried  in  deep  thought.  Standing  erect 
above  them,   like  a   sentry   upon    a    palisade,   James 


558  WOOD   AND   STOXE 

Andersen  stared  gloomily  down  upon  this  little  drama. 
In  some  strange  way,  —  perhaps  because  of  some 
sudden  recurrence  of  his  mental  trouble,  —  he  seemed 
quite  unconscious  of  anything  dishonourable  or  base 
in  thus  withholding  from  these  two  people  the  knowl- 
edge that  he  was  overhearing  them. 

"I'll  take  care  of  you  to  the  end  of  my  life!"  the 
young  man  repeated.  "I'm  doing  quite  well  now 
with  my  work.  You'll  be  able  to  have  all  you  want. 
You'll  be  better  off  than  you  are  here,  and  you  know 
perfectly  well  that  as  soon  as  your  father's  free 
he'll  marry  that  friend  of  his  in  Yeoborough.  I 
saw  him  with  her  last  Sunday.  I'm  sure  its  only  for 
your  sake  that  he  stays  single.  She's  got  three 
children,  and  that's  what  holds  him  back  —  that, 
and  the  thought  that  you  two  mightn't  get  on  to- 
gether. You'd  be  doing  your  father  a  kindness  if  you 
said  yes  to  me,  Ninsy.  Please,  please,  my  darling, 
say  it,  and  make  me  grateful  to  you  forever!" 

"I  can't  say  it,  —  Philip,  dear,  I  can't,  I  can't"; 
murmured  the  girl,  in  a  voice  so  low  that  the  sentinel 
above  them  could  only  just  catch  her  words.  "I  do 
care  for  you,  and  I  do  value  your  goodness  to  me, 
but  I  can't  say  the  words,  Philip.  Something  seems 
to  stop  me,  something  in  my  throat." 

It  was  not  to  her  throat  however,  that  the  agi- 
tated Ninsy  raised  her  thin  hands.  As  she  pressed 
them  against  her  breast  a  look  of  tragic  sorrow  came 
into  her  face.     Philip  regarded  her  wistfully. 

"You're  thinking  you  don't  love  me,  dear,  —  and 
never  can  love  me.  I  know  that,  well  enough!  I 
know  you  don't  love  me  as  I  love  you.  But  what 
does   that    matter.''      I've   known   that,    all   the   time. 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  559 

The  thing  is,  you  won't  find  anyone  who  loves  you  as 
I  do,  —  ready  to  live  with  you  as  I've  said  I  will, 
ready  to  nurse  you  and  look  after  you.  Other  people's 
love  will  be  always  asking  and  demanding  from  you. 
Mine  —  oh,  it's  true,  my  darling,  it's  true!  —  mine 
only  wants  to  give  up  everything  to  make  you 
happy." 

Ninsy  was  evidently  more  than  a  little  moved  by 
the  boy's  appeal.  There  was  a  ring  of  passionate 
sincerity  in  his  tone  which  went  straight  to  her 
heart.  She  bent  down  and  covered  her  face  with  her 
hands.  When  at  length  she  lifted  up  her  head  and 
answered  him,  there  were  tears  on  her  cheeks,  and 
the  watchful  listener  above  them  did  not  miss  the 
quiver  in  her  tone. 

"I'm  sorry,  Philip  boy,  more  sorry  than  I  can 
say,  that  I  can't  be  nicer  to  you,  that  I  can't  show 
my  gratitude  to  you,  in  the  way  you  wish.  But 
though  I  do  care  for  you,  and  —  and  value  your 
dear  love  —  something  stops  me,  something  makes 
it  impossible  that  this  should  happen." 

"I  believe  it's  because  you  love  that  fellow  Ander- 
sen!" cried  the  excited  youth,  leaping  to  his  feet  in 
his  agitation. 

In  making  this  movement,  the  figure  of  the  stone- 
carver,  silhouetted  with  terrible  distinctness  against 
the  sky-line,  became  visible  to  him.  Instinctively  he 
uttered  a  cry  of  surprise  and  anger. 

"What  do  you  want  here.'*  You've  been  listening! 
You've  been  spying  on  us!  Get  away,  can't  you! 
Get  back  to  your  pretty  young  lady  —  her  that's 
going  to  marry  John  Goring  for  the  sake  of  his 
money!      Clear  out  of    this,    do   you   hear?      Ninsy 's 


560  WOOD   AND   STONE 

sick  of  you  and  your  ways.    Clear  off!  or  I'll  make  you 
—  eavesdropper ! ' ' 

By  this  time  Ninsy  had  also  risen,  and  stood  facing 
the  figure  above  them.  Every  vestige  of  colour  had 
left  her  cheeks,  and  her  hand  was  pressed  against  her 
side.  Andersen  made  a  curious  incoherent  sound  and 
took  a  step  towards  them. 

"Get  aw^ay,  can't  you!"  reiterated  the  furious 
youth.  "You've  caused  enough  trouble  here  already. 
Look  at  her,  —  can't  you  see  how  ill  she  is?  Get 
back  —  damn  you!  —  unless  you  want  to  kill  her." 

Ninsy  certainly  looked  as  though  in  another  mo- 
ment she  were  going  to  fall.  She  made  a  piteous 
little  gesture,  as  if  to  w^ard  off  from  Andersen  the 
boy's  savage  words,  but  Philip  caught  her  passion- 
ately round  the  waist. 

"Get  away!"  he  cried  once  more.  She  belongs  to 
me  now.  You  might  have  had  her,  you  coward  — 
you  turncoat!  —  but  you  let  her  go  for  your  newer 
prey.  Oh,  you're  a  fine  gentleman,  James  Andersen, 
a  fine  faithful  gentleman!  You  don't  hold  w^ith 
strikes.  You  don't  hold  with  workmen  rising  against 
masters.  You  hold  with  keeping  in  with  those  that 
are  in  power.  Clear  off  —  eavesdropper!  Get  back 
to  Mistress  John  Goring  and  your  nice  brother! 
He's  as  pretty  a  gentleman  as  you  are,  with  his  dear 
Miss  Gladys!" 

Ninsy's  feet  staggered  beneath  her  and  she  began 
to  hang  limp  upon  his  arm.  She  opened  her  mouth 
to  speak,  but  could  only  gasp  helplessly.  Her  wide- 
open  eyes  —  staring  from  her  pallid  face  —  never  left 
Andersen  for  a  moment.  Of  Philip  she  seemed  abso- 
lutely  unconscious.     The  stone-carver  made  another 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  5G1 

step  down  the  hill.  His  eyes,  too,  were  fixed  intently 
on  the  girl,  and  of  his  rival's  angry  speeches  he  seemed 
utterly  oblivious. 

"Get  away!"  the  boy  reiterated,  beside  himself 
with  fury,  supporting  the  drooping  form  of  his  com- 
panion as  if  its  weight  were  nothing.  "We've  had 
enough  of  your  shilly-shallying  and  trickery!  We've 
had  enough  of  your  fine  manners!  A  damned  cow- 
ardly spy  —  that's  what  I  call  you,  you  well-behaved 
gentleman!     Get  back  —  can't  you!" 

The  drooping  girl  uttered  some  incoherent  words 
and  made  a  helpless  gesture  with  her  hand.  Andersen 
seemed  to  read  her  meaning  in  her  eyes,  for  he  paused 
abruptly  in  his  approach  and  stretched  out  his  arms. 

"Good-bye,  Ninsy!"  he  murmured  in  a  low  voice. 
He  said  no  more,  and  turning  on  his  heel,  scrambled 
swiftly  back  over  the  crest  of  the  ridge  and  disap- 
peared from  view. 

Philip  flung  a  parting  taunt  after  him,  and  then, 
lifting  the  girl  bodily  off  her  feet,  staggered  down 
the  slope  to  the  cottage,  holding  her  in  his  arms. 

Meanwhile  James  Andersen  walked  swiftly  across 
the  stubble-field  in  the  direction  of  Leo's  Hill.  At 
the  pace  he  moved  it  only  took  him  some  brief 
minutes  to  reach  the  long  stone  wall  that  separates, 
in  this  quarter,  the  quarried  levels  of  the  promontory 
from  the  high  arable  lands  which  abut  upon  it. 

He  climbed  over  this  barrier  and  strode  blindly 
and  recklessly  forward  among  the  slippery  grassy 
paths  that  crossed  one  another  along  the  edges  of 
the  deeper  pits. 

The  stone-carver  was  approaching,  though  quite 
unconsciously,  the  scene  of  a  very  remarkable  drama. 


562  WOOD  AND   STONE  1 

Some  fifteen  minutes  before  his  approach,  the  two 
girls  from  Nevilton  House  had  reached  the  precipi- 
tous edge  of  what  was  known  in  that  locality  as 
Caesar's  Quarry.  Caesar's  Quarry  was  a  large  disused 
pit,  deeper  and  more  extensive  than  most  of  the  old 
excavations  on  the  Hill,  and  surrounded,  on  all  but 
one  side,  by  blank  precipitous  walls  of  weather- 
stained  sandstone.  These  walls  of  smooth  stone 
remained  always  dark  and  damp,  whatever  the  tem- 
perature might  be  of  the  air  above  them;  and  the 
floor  of  the  Quarry  was  composed  of  a  soft  verdant 
carpet  of  cool  moist  moss,  interspersed  by  stray 
heaps  of  discoloured  rubble,  on  which  flourished,  at 
this  particular  season  of  the  year,  masses  of  that 
sombre-foliaged  weed  known  as  wormwood. 

On  the  northern  side  of  Caesar's  Quarry  rose  a  high 
narrow  ridge  of  rock,  divided,  at  uneven  spaces,  by 
deeply  cut  fissures  or  chasms,  some  broad  and  some 
narrow,  but  all  overgrown  to  the  very  edge  by  short 
slippery  grass.  This  ridge,  known  locally  as  Claudy's 
Leap,  was  a  favourite  venture-place  of  the  more 
daring  among  the  children  of  the  neighbourhood,  who 
would  challenge  one  another  to  feats  of  courage  and 
agility,  along  its  perilous  edge. 

On  the  side  of  Claudy's  Leap,  opposite  from  Caesar's 
Quarry,  was  a  second  pit,  of  even  deeper  descent  than 
the  other,  but  of  much  smaller  expanse.  This  second 
quarry,  also  disused  for  several  generations,  remained 
so  far  nameless,  destiny  having,  it  might  seem,  with- 
held the  baptismal  honour,  until  the  place  had  earned 
a  right  to  it  by  becoming  the  scene  of  some  tragic, 
or  otherwise  noteworthy,  event. 

Gladys    and    Lacrima    approached    Caesar's    Quarry 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  563 

from  the  western  side,  from  whose  slope  a  little 
winding  path  —  the  only  entrance  or  exit  attainable 
—  led  down  into  its  shadowy  depths.  The  Italian 
glanced  with  a  certain  degree  of  apprehension  into 
the  gulf  beneath  her,  but  Gladys  seemed  to  take  the 
thing  so  much  for  granted,  and  appeared  so  perfectly 
at  her  ease,  that  she  was  ashamed  to  confess  her 
tremors.  The  elder  girl,  indeed,  continued  chatting 
cheerfully  to  her  companion  about  indifferent  matters, 
and  as  she  clambered  down  the  little  path  in  front 
of  her,  she  turned  once  or  twice,  in  her  fluent  dis- 
course, to  make  sure  that  Lacrima  was  following. 
The  two  cousins  stood  for  awhile  in  silence,  side  by 
side,  when  they  reached  the  bottom. 

"How  nice  and  cool  it  is!"  cried  Gladys,  after  a 
pause.  "I  was  getting  scorched  up  there!  Let's  sit 
down  a  little,  shall  we,  —  before  we  start  back.''  I 
love  these  old  quarries." 

They  sat  down,  accordingly,  upon  a  heap  of  stones, 
and  Gladys  serenely  continued  her  chatter,  glancing 
up,  however,  now  and  again,  to  the  frowning  ridges 
of  the  precipices  above  them. 

They  had  not  waited  long  In  this  way,  when  the 
quarry-owner's  daughter  gave  a  perceptible  start,  and 
raised  her  hand  quickly  to  her  lips. 

Her  observant  eye  had  caught  sight  of  the  figure 
of  Mr.  John  Goring  peering  down  upon  them  from 
the  opposite  ridge.  Had  Lacrima  observed  this 
movement  and  lifted  her  eyes  too,  she  would  have 
received  a  most  invaluable  warning,  but  the  Powers 
whoever  they  may  have  been,  who  governed  the 
sequence  of  events  upon  Leo's  Hill,  impelled  her  to 
keep  her  head  lowered,  and  her  interest  concentrated 


564  WOOD  AND   STONE 

upon  a  tuft  of  curiously  feathered  moss.  Gladys 
remained  motionless  for  several  moments,  while  the 
figure  on  the  opposite  side  vanished  as  suddenly  as  it 
had  appeared.     Then  she  slowly  rose. 

"Oh,  how  silly  I  am,"  she  cried;  "I've  dropped  that 
bunch  of  marjoram.  Stop  a  minute,  dear.  Don't 
move!  I'll  just  run  up  and  get  it.  It  was  in  the 
path.     I  know  exactly  where!" 

"I'll  come  with  you  if  you  like,"  said  Lacrima 
listlessly,  "then  you  won't  have  to  come  back.  Or 
why  not  leave  it  for  a  moment.''" 

"It's   on   the   path,  I   tell   you!"  cried   her   cousin, 
already  some  way  up  the  slope;  "I'm  scared  of  some- 
one taking  it.      Marjoram   isn't   common   about   here. 
Oh   no!    Stay    where  you    are.      I'll    be    back    in    a^ 
second. " 

The  Italian  relapsed  into  her  former  dreamy  un- 
concern. She  listlessly  began  stripping  the  leaves 
from  a  spray  of  wormwood  which  grew  by  her  side. 
The  place  where  she  sat  was  in  deep  shadow,  though 
upon  the  summit  of  the  opposite  ridge  the  sun  lay  hot. 
Her  thoughts  hovered  about  her  friend  in  Dead  Man's 
Lane,  She  had  vaguely  hoped  to  get  a  glimpse  of 
him  this  afternoon,  but  the  absence  of  Dangelis  had 
interfered  with  this. 

She  began  building  fantastic  castles  in  the  air, 
trying  to  call  up  the  image  of  a  rejuvenated  Mr. 
Quincunx,  freed  from  all  cares  and  worries,  living  the 
placid  epicurean  life  his  heart  craved.  Would  he, 
she  wondered,  recognize  then,  what  her  sacrifice 
meant?  Or  would  he  remain  still  obsessed  by  this 
or  the  other  cynical  fantasy,  as  far  from  the  real 
truth  of  things  as  a  madman's  dream.'*     She  smiled 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  565 

gently  to  herself  as  she  thought  of  her  friend's 
peculiarities.  Her  love  for  him,  as  she  felt  it  now, 
across  a  quivering  gulf  of  misty  space,  was  a  thing 
as  humorously  tolerant  and  tender  as  it  might  have 
been  had  they  been  man  and  wife  of  many  years' 
standing.  In  these  things  Lacrima's  Latin  blood  gave 
hev  a  certain  maturity  of  feeling,  and  emphasized 
the  maternal  element  in  her  attachment. 

She  contemplated  dreamily  the  smooth  bare  walls 
3f  the  cavernous  arena  in  which  she  sat.  Their 
coolness  and  dampness  was  not  unpleasant  after  the 
leat  of  the  upper  air,  but  there  was  something 
sepulchral  about  them,  something  that  gave  the  girl 
:he  queer  impression  of  a  colossal  tomb  —  a  tomb 
iv'hose  scattered  bones  might  even  now  be  lying, 
w;'ashed  by  centuries  of  rain,  under  the  rank  weeds  of 
:hese  heaps  of  rubble. 

She  heard  the  sound  of  someone  descending  the 
3ath  behind  her  but,  taking  for  granted  that  it  was 
ler  cousin,  she  did  not  turn  her  head.  It  was  only 
w^hen  the  steps  were  quite  close  that  she  recognized 
:hat  they  were  too  heavy  to  be  those  of  a  girl. 

Then  she  leapt  to  her  feet,  and  swung  round,  — to 
ind  herself  confronted  by  the  sturdy  figure  of  Mr. 
Fohn  Goring.  She  gave  a  wild  cry  of  panic  and  fled 
Dlindly  across  the  smooth  floor  of  the  great  quarry. 
Mr.  Goring  followed  her  at  his  leisure. 

The  girl's  terror  was  so  great,  that,  hardly  conscious 
)f  what  she  did,  she  ran  desperately  towards  the  re- 
notest  corner  of  the  excavation,  where  some  ancient 
)lasting-process  had  torn  a  narrow  crevice  out  of 
he  solid  rock.  This  direction  of  her  flight  made  the 
armer's   pursuit   of   her   a   fatally   easy   undertaking, 


5G6  ^YOOD  AND   STONE 


for  the  great  smooth  walls  closed  in,  at  a  sharp  angle, 
at  that  point,  and  the  crevice,  where  the  two  walls 
met,  only  sank  a  few  feet  into  the  rock. 

Mr.  Goring,  observing  the  complete  hopelessness 
of  the  girl's  mad  attempt  to  escape  him,  proceeded 
to  advance  towards  her  as  calmly  and  leisurely  as  if 
she  had  been  some  hare  or  rabbit  he  had  just  shot. 
The  fact  that  Lacrima  had  chosen  this  particular 
cul-de-sac,  on  the  eastern  side  of  the  quarry,  was  a 
most  felicitous  accident  for  Gladys,  for  it  enabled 
her  to  watch  the  event  with  as  much  ease  as  if  she 
had  been  a  Drusilla  or  a  Livia,  seated  in  the  Roman 
amphitheatre.  The  fair-haired  girl  crept  to  the 
extreme  brink  of  the  steep  descent  and  there,  lying 
prone  on  the  thyme-scented  grass,  her  chin  propped 
upon  her  hands,  she  followed  with  absorbed  interest 
the  farmer's  movements  as  he  approached  his  recalci- 
trant fiancee. 

The  terrified  girl  soon  found  out  the  treachery  of 
the  panic-instinct  which  had  led  her  into  this  trap. 
Had  she  remained  in  the  open,  it  is  quite  possible 
that  by  a  little  manoeuvring  she  could  have  escaped; 
but  now  her  only  exit  was  blocked  by  her  advancing 
pursuer. 

Turning  to  face  him,  and  leaning'  back  against  the 
massive  wall  of  stone,  she  stretched  out  her  arms  on 
either  side  of  her,  seizing  convulsively  in  her  fingers 
some  tufts  of  knot-grass  which  grew  on  the  surface 
of  the  rock.  Here,  with  panting  bosom  and  pallid 
cheeks,  she  awaited  his  approach.  Her  tense  figure 
and  terror-stricken  gaze  only  needed  the  imprisoning 
fetters  to  have  made  of  her  an  exact  modern  image 
of   the   unfortunate   Andromeda.      She   neither   moved 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  5G7 

lor  uttered  the  least  cry,  as  Mr.  Goring  drew  near 
ler. 

At  that  moment  a  wild  and  unearthly  shout  rever- 
berated through  the  quarry.  The  sound  of  it  —  caught 
ip  by  repeated  echoes  —  went  rolling  away  across 
Leo's  Hill,  frightening  the  sheep  and  startling  the  cider- 
Irinkers  in  the  lonely  Inn.  Gladys  leapt  to  her  feet, 
•an  round  to  where  the  path  descended,  and  began 
lastily  scrambling  down.  Mr.  Goring  retreated  hur- 
•iedly  into  the  centre  of  the  arena,  and  with  his  hand 
ihading  his  eyes  gazed  up  at  the  intruder. 

It  was  no  light-footed  Perseus,  who  on  behalf  of  this 
orlorn  child  of  classic  shores,  appeared  as  if  from  the 
iky.  It  was,  indeed,  only  the  excited  figure  of  James 
Andersen  that  Mr.  Goring's  gaze,  and  Lacrima's 
)ewildered  glance,  encountered  simultaneously.  The 
itone-carver  seemed  to  be  possessed  by  a  legion  of 
levils.  His  first  thundering  shout  was  followed  by 
everal  others,  each  more  terrifying  than  the  last, 
ind  Gladys,  rushing  past  the  astonished  farmer, 
eized  Lacrima  by  the  arm. 

"Come!"  she  cried.  "Uncle  was  a  brute  to  frighten 
'^ou.  But,  for  heaven's  sake,  let's  get  out  of  this, 
)efore  that  madman  collects  a  crowd!  They'll  all 
)e  down  here  from  the  inn  in  another  moment, 
Juick,  dear,  quick!  Our  only  chance  is  to  get  away 
low." 

Lacrima  permitted  her  cousin  to  hurry  her  across 
he  quarry  and  up  the  path.  As  they  neared  the 
ummit  of  the  slope  the  Italian  turned  and  looked 
)ack.  Mr.  Goring  was  still  standing  where  they  had 
eft  him,  gazing  with  petrified  interest  at  the  w41d 
testures  of  the  man  above  him. 


508  WOOD   AND   STONE 

Andersen  seemed  beside  himself.  He  kept  fran- 
tically waving  his  arms,  and  seemed  engaged  in  some 
incoherent  defiance  of  the  invisible  Powers  of  the 
air.  Lacrima,  as  she  looked  at  him,  became  convinced 
that  he  was  out  of  his  mind.  She  could  not  even 
be  quite  clear  if  he  recognized  her.  She  was  certain 
that  it  was  not  against  her  assailant  that  his  wild 
cries  and  defiances  were  hurled.  It  did  not  appear 
that  he  was  even  aware  of  the  presence  of  the  farmer. 
Whether  or  not  he  had  seen  her  and  known  her  when 
he  uttered  his  first  cry,  she  could  not  tell.  It 
was  certainly  against  no  earthly  enemies  that  the 
man  was  struggling  now. 

Vennie  Seldom  might  have  hazarded  the  supersti- 
tious suggestion  that  his  fit  was  not  madness  at  all 
but  a  sudden  illumination,  vouchsafed  to  his  long 
silence,  of  the  real  conditions  of  the  airy  warfare  that 
is  being  constantly  waged  around  us.  At  that  mo- 
ment, Vennie  might  have  said,  James  Andersen  was 
the  only  perfectly  sane  person  among  them,  for  to  his 
eyes  alone,  the  real  nature  of  that  heathen  place  and 
its  dark  hosts  was  laid  manifestly  bare.  The  man, 
according  to  this  strange  view,  was  wrestling  to  the 
death,  in  his  supreme  hour,  against  the  Forces  that 
had  not  only  darkened  his  own  days  and  those  of 
Lacrima,  but  had  made  the  end  of  his  mother's  life 
so  tragic  and  miserable. 

Gladys    dragged    Lacrima    away    as    soon    as    they 
reached   the   top   of   the   ascent   but   the   Pariah   had 
time   to   mark   the   last   desperate  gesture   of   her   de-, 
liverer   before   he   vanished   from    her   sight   over   the 
ridge.  \ 

Mr.    Goring   overtook   them    before   they   had   gone 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  5G9 

far,  and  walked  on  with  them,  talking  to  Gladys 
about  Andersen's  evident  insanity. 

"It's  no  good  ray  trying  to  do  anything,"  he  re- 
marked. "But  I'll  send  Bert  round  for  Luke  as  soon 
as  I  get  home.  Luke'll  bring  him  to  his  senses.  They 
say  he's  been  taken  like  this  before,  and  has  come 
round.  He  hears  voices,  you  know,  and  fancies 
things." 

They  walked  in  silence  along  the  high  upland  road 
that  leads  from  the  principal  quarries  of  the  Hill  to 
the  Wild  Pine  hamlet  and  Nevil's  Gully.  When  they 
reached  the  latter  place,  the  two  girls  went  on,  down 
Root-Thatch  Lane,  and  Mr.  Goring  took  the  field- 
path  to  the  Priory. 

Before  they  separated,  the  farmer  turned  to  his 
future  bride,  who  had  been  careful  to  keep  Gladys 
between  herself  and  him,  and  addressed  her  in  the 
most  gentle  voice  he  knew  how  to  assume. 

"Don't  be  angry  with  me,  lass,"  he  said.  "I  was 
only  teasing,  just  now.  'Twas  a  poor  jest  maybe, 
and  ye've  cause  to  look  glowering.  But  when  we 
two  be  man  and  wife  ye'll  find  I'm  a  sight  better 
to  live  with  than  many  a  fair-spoken  one.  These 
be  queer  times,  and  like  enough  I  seem  a  queer  fel- 
low, but  things'll  settle  themselves.  You  take  my 
word  for  it!" 

Lacrima  could  only  murmur  a  faint  assent  in  reply 
to  these  words,  but  as  she  entered  with  Gladys  the 
shadow  of  the  tunnel-like  lane,  she  could  not  help 
thinking  that  her  repulsion  to  this  man,  dreadful 
though  it  was,  was  nothing  in  comparison  with  the 
fear  and  loathing  with  which  she  regarded  Mr. 
Romer.      Contrasted    with    his   sinister   relative,    Mr. 


570  WOOD   AND   STONE 

John    Goring   was,    after   all,    no    more   than   a   rough 
simpleton. 

Meanwhile,  on  Leo's  Hill,  an  event  of  tragic  sig- 
nificance had  occurred.  It  will  be  remembered  that 
the  last  Lacrima  had  seen  of  James  Andersen  was  the 
wild  final  gesticulation  he  made,  —  a  sort  of  mad 
appeal  to  the  Heavens  against  the  assault  of  invisible 
enemies,  —  before  he  vanished  from  sight  on  the 
further  side  of  Claudy's  Leap.  This  vanishing  just, 
at  that  point,  meant  no  more  to  Lacrima  than  that 
he  had  probably  taken  a  lower  path,  but  had  Gladys 
or  Mr.  Goring  witnessed  it,  —  or  any  other  person 
who  knew  the  topography  of  the  place,  —  a  much 
more  startling  conclusion  would  have  been  inevitable. 
Nor  would  such  a  conclusion  have  been  incorrect. 

The  unfortunate  man,  forgetting,  in  his  excitement, 
the  existence  of  the  other  quarry,  the  nameless  one; 
forgetting  in  fact  that  Claudy's  Leap  was  a  razor's 
edge  between  two  precipices,  had  stepped  heedlessly 
backwards,  after  his  final  appeal  to  Heaven,  and 
fallen,  without  a  cry,  straight  into  the  gulf. 

The  height  of  his  fall  would,  in  any  case,  have 
probably  killed  him,  but  as  it  was  "he  dashed  his 
head,"  in  the  language  of  the  Bible,  "against  a  stone"; 
and  in  less  than  a  second  after  his  last  cry,  his  soul, 
to  use  the  expression  of  a  more  pagan  scripture, 
"was  driven,  murmuring,  into  the  Shades." 

It  fell  to  the  lot,  therefore,  not  of  Luke,  who  did 
not  return  from  Weymouth  till  late  that  evening, 
but  of  a  motley  band  of  holiday-makers  from  the 
hill-top  Inn,  to  discover  the  madman's  fate.  Arriv- 
ing at  the  spot  almost  immediately  after  the  girls' 
departure,    these    honest    revellers  —  strangers    to    the 


CAESAR'S  QUARRY  571 

locality  —  had    quickly   found  the  explanation  of   the 
unearthly  cries  they  had  heard. 

The  eve  of  the  baptism  of  Mr.  Roraer's  daughter 
was  celebrated,  therefore,  by  the  baptism  of  the 
nameless  quarry.  Henceforth,  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Nevilton,  the  place  was  never  known  by  any 
other  appellation  than  that  of  "Jimmy's  Drop";  and 
by  that  name  any  future  visitors,  curious  to  observe 
the  site  of  so  singular  an  occurrence,  will  have  to 
enquire  for  it,  as  they  drink  their  pint  of  cider  in  the 
Half-Moon  Tavern. 


CHAPTER   XXII 
A  ROYAL  WATERING-PLACE 

LUKE  ANDERSEN'S  trip  to  Weymouth  proved 
most  charming  and  eventful.  He  had  scarcely 
emerged  from  the  crowded  station,  with  its 
row  of  antique  omnibuses  and  its  lethargic  phalanx 
of  expectant  out-porters  and  bath-chair  men,  —  each 
one  of  whom  was  a  crusted  epitome  of  ingrained 
quaintness,  —  when  he  caught  sight  of  Phyllis  Santon 
and  Annie  Bristow  strolling  laughingly  towards  the 
sea-front.  They  must  have  walked  to  Yeoborough 
and  entered  the  train  there,  for  he  had  seen  nothing 
of  them  at  Nevilton  Station. 

The  vivacious  Polly,  a  lively  little  curly-haired 
child,  of  some  seventeen  summers,  was  far  too  happy 
and  thrilled  by  the  adventure  of  the  excursion  and 
the  holiday  air  of  the  sea-side,  to  indulge  in  any  jeal- 
ous fits.  She  was  the  first  of  the  two,  indeed,  to  greet 
the  elder  girls,  both  of  them  quite  well  known  to 
her,  running  rapidly  after  them,  in  her  white  stiffly- 
starched  print  frock,  and  hailing  them  with  a  shout 
of  joyous  recognition. 

The  girls  turned  quickly  and  they  all  three  awaited, 
in  perfect  good  temper,  the  stone-carver's  deliberate 
approach.  Never  had  the  spirits  of  this  latter  been 
higher,  or  his  surroundings  more  congenial  to  his  mood. 

Anxious  not  to  lose  any  single  one  of  the  exquisite 
sounds,   sights,   smells,   and  intimations,   which   came 


A  ROYAL  WATERING-PLACE     573 

pouring  in  upon  him,  as  he  leisurely  drifted  out  upon 
the  sunny  street,  he  let  his  little  companion  run  after 
his  two  friends  as  fast  as  she  wished,  and  watched  with 
serene  satisfaction  the  airy  flight  of  her  light  figure, 
with  the  deep  blue  patch  of  sea-line  at  the  end  of 
the  street  as  its  welcome  background. 

The  smell  of  sea-weed,  the  sound  of  the  waves 
Dn  the  beach,  the  cries  of  the  fish-mongers,  and  the 
coming  and  going  of  the  whole  heterogeneous  crowd, 
Slled  Luke's  senses  with  the  same  familiar  thrill  of 
indescribable  pleasure  as  he  had  known,  on  such  an 
occasion,  from  his  earliest  childhood.  The  gayly 
piled  fruit  heaped  up  on  the  open  stalls,  the  little 
tobacco-shops  with  their  windows  full  of  half-senti- 
mental half-vulgar  picture-cards,  the  weather-worn 
fronts  of  the  numerous  public-houses,  the  wood- 
sv'ork  of  whose  hospitable  doors  always  seemed  to  him 
endowed  with  a  peculiar  mellowness  of  their  own,  — 
ill  these  things,  as  they  struck  his  attentive  senses, 
revived  the  most  deeply-felt  stirrings  of  old  as- 
sociations. 

Especially  did  he  love  the  sun-bathed  atmosphere, 
30  languid  with  holiday  ease,  which  seemed  to  float 
n  and  out  of  the  open  lodging-house  entrances, 
^here  hung  those  sun-dried  sea-weeds  and  wooden 
>pades  and  buckets,  which  ever-fresh  installments  of 
3are-legged  children  carried  off  and  replaced.  Luke 
ilways  maintained  that  of  all  mortal  odours  he  loved 
iest  the  indescribable  smell  of  the  hall-way  of  a  sea- 
iide  lodging-house,  where  the  very  oil-cloth  on  the 
loor,  and  the  dead  bull-rushes  in  the  corner,  seemed 
inpregnanted  with  long  seasons  of  salt-burdened  sun- 
illed  air. 


574  WOOD   AND   STONE 

The  fish-shops,  the  green-grocer's  shops,  the  second- 
hand book-shops,  and  most  of  all,  those  delicious 
repositories  of  sea-treasures  —  foreign  importations  all 
glittering  with  mother-of-pearl,  dried  sea-horses,  sea- 
sponges,  sea-coral,  and  wonderful  little  boxes  all 
pasted  over  with  shimmering  shells  —  filled  him  with 
a  delight  as  vivid  and  new  as  when  he  had  first 
encountered  them  in  remote  infancy. 

This   first   drifting    down   to   the   sea's   edge,    after 
emerging    from    the    train,    always    seemed    to    Luke  j 
the  very  supremacy  of  human  happiness.     The  bare  t 
legs  of  the  children,  little  and  big,  who  ran  laughing 
or    crying    past    him    and    the    tangled    curls    of    the 
elder  damsels,  tossed  so  coquettishly  back  from  their 
sun-burnt  faces,  the  general  feeling  of  irresponsibility  ii 
in  the  air,  the  tang  of  adventure  in  it  all,  of  the  un-  ' 
expected,  the  chance-born,  always  wrapped  him  about 
in  an  epicurean  dream  of  pleasure.  | 

That  monotonous  splash  of  the  waves  against  the 
pebbles,  —  how  he  associated  it  with  endless  exquisite 
flirtations,  —  flirtations  conducted  with  adorable  shame- 
lessness  between  the  blue  sky  and  the  blue  sea!     The 
memory  of  these,   the  vague  memory  of  enchanting 
forms  prone  or  supine  upon  the  glittering  sands,  with 
the  passing  and  re-passing  of   the  same  plump   bath- 
ing-woman, —  he     had     known    her    since    his    child- 
hood!—  and   the   same   donkeys   with   their   laughing; 
burdens,  and  the  same  sweet-sellers  with   their  trays, 
almost  made  him  cry  aloud  with  delight,  as  emerging 
at  length  upon  the  Front,  and  overtaking  his  friend* 
at  the  Jubilee  Clock-Tower,  he  saw  the  curved  expans( 
of  the  bay  lying  magically  spread  out  before  him.    Hov\ 
well  he  knew  it  all,  and  how  inexpressibly  he  loved  it 


%. 


I 


A   ROYAL  WATERING-PLACE      575 

Tlie  tide  was  on  its  outward  ebb  when  the  four 
happy  companions  jumped  down,  hand  in  hand,  from 
the  esplanade  to  the  shingle.  The  long  dark  windrow 
of  broken  shells  and  seaweed  drew  a  pleasant  dividing 
line  between  the  dry  and  the  wet  sand.  Luke  always 
associated  the  stranded  star-fish  and  jelly-fish  and 
bits  of  scattered  drift-wood  which  that  windrow 
offered,  with  those  other  casually  tossed-up  treasures 
with  which  an  apparently  pagan-minded  providence 
had  bestrewn  his  way! 

Once  well  out  upon  the  sands,  and  while  the  girls, 
with  little  shrieks  and  bursts  of  merriment,  were 
pushing  one  another  into  the  reach  of  the  tide,  Luke 
turned  to  survey  with  a  deep  sigh  of  satisfaction,  the 
general  appearance  of  the  animated  scene. 

The  incomparable  watering-place,  —  with  its  charm- 
ing "after-glow,"  as  Mr.  Hardy  so  beautifully  puts 
it,  "of  Georgian  gaiety,"  —  had  never  looked  so 
fascinating  as  it  looked  this  August  afternoon. 

The  queer  old-fashioned  bathing-machines,  one  of 
them  still  actually  carrying  the  Lion  and  Unicorn 
upon  its  pointed  roof,  glittered  in  the  sunshine  with 
an  air  of  welcoming  encouragement.  The  noble  sweep 
of  the  houses  behind  the  crescent-shaped  esplanade, 
with  the  names  of  their  terraces  —  Brunswick, 
Regent,  Gloucester,  Adelaide  —  so  suggestive  of  the 
same  historic  epoch,  gleamed  with  reciprocal  hospi- 
tality; nor  did  the  tall  spire  of  St.  John's  Church,  a 
landmark  for  miles  round,  detract  from  the  harmony 
of  the  picture. 

On  Luke's  left,  as  he  turned  once  more  and  faced 
the  sea,  the  vibrating  summer  air,  free  at  present 
from  any  trace  of  mist,  permitted  a  wide  and  lovely 


576  WOOD   AND   STONE 

view  of  the  distant  cliffs  enclosing  the  bay.  The 
great  White  Horse,  traced  upon  the  chalk  hills,  seemed 
within  an  hour's  walk  of  where  he  stood,  and  the 
majestic  promontory  of  the  White  Nore  drew  the 
eye  onward  to  where,  at  the  end  of  the  visible  coast- 
line, St.  Alban's  Head  sank  into  the  sea. 

On  Luke's  right  the  immediate  horizon  was  blocked 
by  the  grassy  eminence  known  to  dwellers  in  Wey- 
mouth as  "the  Nothe";  but  beyond  this,  and  beyond 
the  break-water  which  formed  an  extension  of  it, 
the  huge  bulk  of  Portland  —  Mr.  Hardy's  Isle  of  the 
Slingers  —  rose  massive  and  shadowy  against  the 
west. 

As  he  gazed  with  familiar  pleasure  at  this  un- 
equalled view,  Luke  could  not  help  thinking  to  him- 
self how  strangely  the  pervading  charm  of  scenes  of 
this  kind  is  enhanced  by  personal  and  literary  asso- 
ciation. He  recalled  the  opening  chapters  of  "The 
Well-Beloved,"  that  curiously  characteristic  fantasy- 
sketch  of  the  great  Wessex  novelist;  and  he  also 
recalled  those  amazing  descriptions  in  Victor  Hugo's 
"L'Homme  qui  Rit,"  which  deal  with  these  same 
localities. 

Shouts    of    girlish    laughter    distracted    him    at    last 
from  his  exquisite  reverie,  and  flinging  himself  down  on 
the  hot  sand  he  gave  himself  up  to  enjoyment.    Hold- 
ing her  tight  by  either  hand,  the  two  elder  girls,  their  j 
skirts  already  drenched  with  salt- water,  were  dragging 
their    struggling    companion    across    the    foamy    sea-  ( 
verge.     The  white  surf  flowed  beneath  their  feet  andj 
their  screams  and  laughter  rang  out  across  the  bay.      i 

Luke  called  to  them  that  he  was  going  to  paddle,} 
and   implored   them   to   do   the   same.      He   preferred: 


A   ROYAL  WATERING-PLACE     577 


to  entice  them  thus  into  the  deeper  water,  rather 
than  to  anticipate  for  them  a  return  home  with 
ruined  petticoats  and  wet  sand-filled  shoes.  Seeing 
him  leisurely  engaged  in  removing  his  boots  and  socks 
and  turning  up  his  trousers,  the  three  exuberant 
young  people  hurried  back  to  his  side  and  proceeded 
with  their  own  preparations. 

Soon,  all  four  of  them,  laughing  and  splashing  one 
another  with  water,  were  blissfully  wading  along  the 
shore,  interspersing  their  playful  teasing  with  alter- 
nate complimentary  and  disparaging  remarks,  relative 
to  the  various  bathers  whose  isolation  they  in- 
vaded. 

Luke's  spirits  rose  higher  and  higher.  No  youth- 
ful Triton,  with  his  attendant  Nereids,  could  have 
expressed  more  vividly  in  his  radiant  aplomb,  the 
elemental  energy  of  air  and  sea.  His  ecstatic  delight 
seemed  to  reach  its  culmination  as  a  group  of  extraor- 
dinarily beautiful  children  came  wading  towards 
them,  their  sunny  hair  and  pearl-bright  limbs  gleam- 
ing against  the  blue  water. 

At  the  supreme  moment  of  this  ecstasy,  however, 
came  a  sudden  pang  of  contrary  emotion,  —  of  dark 
fear  and  gloomy  foreboding.  For  a  sudden  passing 
second,  there  rose  before  him,  —  it  was  now  about 
half-past  four  in  the  afternoon,  —  the  image  of  his 
brother,  melancholy  and  taciturn,  his  heart  broken 
by  Lacrima's  trouble.  And  then,  like  a  full  dark 
tide  rolling  in  upon  him,  came  that  ominous  reaction, 
spoken  of  by  the  old  pagan  writers,  and  regarded  by 
them  as  the  shadow  of  the  jealousy  of  the  Immortal 
Gods,  envious  of  human  pleasure  —  the  reaction  to  the 
fare  of  the  Eumenides. 


578  WOOD   AND   STONE 

His  companions  remained  as  gay  and  charming  as 
ever.  Nothing  could  have  been  prettier  than  to 
watch  the  mixture  of  audacity  and  coyness  with 
which  they  twisted  their  frocks  round  them,  nothing 
more  amusing  than  to  note  the  differences  of  character 
between  the  three,  as  they  betrayed  their  naive  souls 
in  their  childish  abandonment  to  the  joy  of  the  hour. 

Both  Phyllis  and  Annie  were  tall  and  slender  and 
dark.  But  there  the  likeness  between  them  ceased. 
Annie  had  red  pouting  lips,  the  lower  one  of  which 
protruded  a  little  beyond  its  fellow,  giving  her  face 
in  repose  a  quite  deceptive  look  of  sullenness  and  petu- 
lance. Her  features  were  irregular  and  a  little  heavy, 
the  beauty  of  her  countenance  residing  in  the  shadowy 
coils  of  dusky  hair  which  surmounted  it,  and  in  the 
velvet  softness  of  her  large  dark  eyes.  For  all  the 
heaviness  of  her  face,  Annie's  expression  was  one  of 
childlike  innocence  and  purity;  and  when  she  flirted 
or  made  love,  she  did  so  with  a  clinging  affectionate- 
ness  and  serious  gravity  which  had  much  of  the 
charm  of  extreme  youth. 

Phyllis,  on  the  contrary,  had  softly  outlined  features 
of  the  most  delicate  regularity,  while  from  her  hazel 
eyes  and  laughing  parted  lips  perpetual  defiant  pro- 
vocations of  alluring  mischief  challenged  everyone 
she  approached.  Annie  was  the  more  loving  of  the 
two,  Phyllis  the  more  lively  and  amorous.  Both  of 
them  made  constant  fun  of  their  little  curly-headed 
companion,  whose  direct  boyish  ways  and  whimsical 
speeches  kept  them  in  continual  peals  of  merriment. 

Tired  at  last  of  paddling,  they  all  waded  to  the 
shore,  and  crossing  the  warm  powdery  sand,  which  is 
one   of   the   chief   attractions   of   the   place,   they   sat 


A    ROYAL  WATERING-PLACE     579 

down  on  the  edge  of  the  shingle  and  dried  their  feet 
in  the  sun. 

Reassuming  their  shoes  and  stockings,  and  de- 
murely shaking  down  their  skirts,  the  three  girls 
followed  the  now  rather  silent  Luke  to  the  little  tea- 
house opposite  the  Clock-Tower,  in  an  upper  room  of 
which,  looking  out  on  the  sea,  were  several  pleasant 
window-seats  furnished  with  convenient  tables. 

The  fragrant  tea,  the  daintiness  of  its  accessories, 
the  fresh  taste  of  the  bread  and  butter,  not  to  speak 
of  the  inexhaustible  spirits  of  his  companions,  soon 
succeeded  in  dispelling  the  stone-carver's  momentary 
depression. 

When  the  meal  was  over,  as  their  train  was  not 
due  to  leave  till  nearly  seven,  and  it  was  now  hardly 
five,  Luke  decided  to  convey  his  little  party  across 
the  harbour-ferry.  They  strolled  out  of  the  shop 
into  the  sunshine,  not  before  the  stone-carver  had 
bestowed  so  lavish  a  tip  upon  the  little  waitress  that 
his  companions  exchanged  glances  of  feminine  dismay. 

They  took  the  road  through  the  old  town  to  reach 
the  ferry,  following  the  southern  of  the  two  parallel 
streets  that  debouch  from  the  Front  at  the  point 
where  stands  the  old-fashioned  equestrian  statue  of 
George  the  Third.  Luke  nourished  in  his  heart  a 
sentimental  tenderness  for  this  simple  monarch, 
vaguely  and  quite  erroneously  associating  the  royal 
interest  in  the  place  with  his  own  dreamy  attachment 
to  it. 

When  they  reached  the  harbour  they  found  it  in  a 
stir  of  excitement  owing  to  the  arrival  of  the  pas- 
senger-boat from  the  Channel  Islands,  one  of  the 
red-funneled     modern     successors     to    those    antique 


580  WOOD   AND   STONE 

paddle-steamers  whose  first  excursions  must  have 
been  witnessed  from  his  Guernsey  refuge  by  the  author 
of  the  "Toilers  of  the  Deep."  Side  by  side  with  the 
smartly  painted  ship,  were  numerous  schooners  and 
brigs,  hailing  from  more  northern  regions,  whose 
cargoes  were  being  unloaded  by  a  motley  crowd  of 
clamorous  dock-hands. 

Luke  and  his  three  companions  turned  to  the  left 
when  they  reached  the  water's  edge  and  strolled  along 
between  the  warehouses  and  the  wharves  until  they 
arrived  at  the  massive  bridge  which  crosses  the 
harbour.  Leaning  upon  the  parapet,  whose  whitish- 
grey  fabric  indicated  that  the  dominion  of  Leo's 
Hill  gave  place  here  to  the  noble  Portland  Stone, 
they  surveyed  with  absorbed  interest  the  busy  scene 
beneath  them. 

The  dark  greenish-colored  water  swirled  rapidly 
seaward  in  the  increasing  ebb  of  the  tide.  White- 
winged  sea-gulls  kept  swooping  down  to  its  surface 
and  rising  again  in  swift  air-cutting  curves,  balancing 
their  glittering  bodies  against  the  slanting  sunlight. 
Every  now  and  then  a  boat-load  of  excursionists 
would  shoot  out  from  beneath  the  shadow  of  the 
wharves  and  shipping,  and  cross  obliquely  the  swift- 
flowing  tide  to  the  landing  steps  on  the  further  shore. 

The  four  friends  moved  to  the  northern  parapet  of 
the  bridge,  and  the  girls  gave  little  cries  of  delight, 
to  see,  at  no  great  distance,  where  the  broad  expanse 
of  the  back-water  began  to  widen,  a  group  of  stately 
swans,  rocking  serenely  on  the  shining  waves.  They 
remained  for  some  while,  trying  to  attract  these 
birds  by  flinging  into  the  water  bits  of  broken  cake, 
saved  by  the  economic-minded  Annie  from  the  recent 


A  ROYAL  WATERING-PLACE     581 

repast.  But  these  offerings  only  added  new  spoil  to 
the  plunder  of  the  greedy  sea-gulls,  from  whose 
rapid  movements  the  more  aristocratic  inland  crea- 
tures kept  haughtily  aloof. 

Preferring  to  use  the  ferry  for  their  crossing  rather 
than  the  bridge,  Luke  led  his  friends  back,  along  the 
wharves,  till  they  reached  the  line  of  slippery  steps 
about  w^hich  loitered  the  lethargic  owners  of  the  ferry- 
boats. With  engaging  alarm,  and  pretty  gasps  and 
murmurs  of  half-simulated  panic,  the  three  young 
damsels  were  helped  down  into  one  of  these  rough 
receptacles,  and  the  bare-necked,  affable  oarsman  pro- 
ceeded, with  ponderous  leisureliness,  to  row  them  across. 

As  the  heavy  oars  rattled  in  their  rowlocks,  and  the 
swirling  tide  gurgled  about  the  keels,  Luke,  seated 
in  the  stern,  between  Annie  and  Phyllis,  felt  once 
more  a  thrilling  sense  of  his  former  emotion.  With 
one  hand  round  Phyllis'  waist,  and  the  other  caress- 
ing Annie's  gloveless  fingers,  he  permitted  his  gaze  to 
wander  first  up,  then  down,  the  flowing  tide. 

Far  out  to  sea,  he  perceived  a  large  war-ship,  like 
a  great  drowsy  sea-monster,  lying  motionless  be- 
tween sky  and  wave;  and  sweeping  in,  round  the  little 
pier's  point,  came  a  light  full-sailed  skiff,  with  the 
water  foaming  across  its  bows. 

With  the  same  engaging  trepidation  in  his  country- 
bred  comrades,  they  clambered  up  the  landing-steps, 
the  low^er  ones  of  which  were  covered  with  green 
sea-weed,  and  the  upper  ones  worn  smooth  as  marble 
by  long  use,  and  thence  emerged  upon  the  little 
narrow  jetty,  bordering  upon  the  harbour's  edge. 

Here  were  a  row  of  the  most  enchanting  eighteenth 
century    lodging-houses,    interspersed,     at    incredibly 


582  WOOD   AND   STOXE 

frequent  spaces,  by  small  antique  inns,  bearing  quaint 
names  drawn  from  British  naval  history. 

Skirting  the  grassy  slopes  of  the  Nothe,  with  its 
old-fashioned  fort,  they  rounded  the  small  promon- 
tory and  climbed  down  among  the  rocks  and  rock- 
pools  which  lay  at  its  feet.  It  was  pretty  to  observe 
the  various  flutterings  and  agitations,  and  to  hear 
the  shouts  of  laughter  and  delight  with  which  the 
young  girls  followed  Luke  over  these  perilous  and 
romantic  obstacles,  and  finally  paused  at  his  side 
upon  a  great  sun-scorched  shell-covered  rock,  sur- 
rounded by  foamy  water. 

The  wind  was  cool  in  this  exposed  spot,  and  hold- 
ing their  hats  in  their  hands  the  little  party  gave 
themselves  up  to  the  freedom  and  freshness  of  air 
and  sea. 

But  the  wandering  interest  of  high-spirited  youth 
is  as  restless  as  the  waves.  Very  soon  Phyllis  and 
Polly  had  drifted  away  from  the  others,  and  were 
climbing  along  the  base  of  the  cliff  above,  filling  their 
hands  with  sea-pinks  and  sea-lavender,  which  attracted 
them  by  their  glaucous  foliage. 

Left  to  themselves,  Luke  removed  his  shoes  and 
stockings,  and  dangled  his  feet  over  the  rock's  edge, 
while  Annie,  prone  upon  her  face,  the  sunshine 
caressing  her  white  neck  and  luxuriant  hair,  stretched 
her  long  bare  arms  into  the  cool  water. 

Leaning  across  the  prostrate  form  of  his  companion, 
and  gazing  down  into  the  deep  recesses  of  the  tidal 
pool  which  separated  the  rock  they  reclined  on  from 
the  one  behind  it,  the  stone-carver  was  able  to  make 
out  the  ineffably  coloured  tendrils  and  soft  translucent 
shapes     of     several     large     sea-anemones,    submerged 


A  ROYAL  WATERING-PLACE     583 

beneath  the  greenish  water.  He  pointed  these  out 
to  his  companion,  who  moving  round  a  little,  and 
tucking  up  her  sleeves  still  higher,  endeavoured  to 
reach  them  with  her  hand.  In  this  she  was  defeated, 
for  the  deceptive  water  was  much  deeper  than  either 
of  them  supposed. 

"What  are  those  darling  little  shells,  down  there 
at  the  bottom,  Luke.?"  she  whispered.  Luke,  with 
his  arm  round  her  neck,  and  his  head  close  to  hers, 
peered  down  into  the  shadowy  depths. 

"They're  some  kind  of  cowries,"  he  said  at  last, 
"shells  that  in  Africa,  I  believe,  they  use  as  money." 

"I  wish  they  were  money  here,"  murmured  the 
girl,  "I'd  buy  mother  one  of  those  silver  brushes 
we  saw  in  the  shop." 

"Listen!"  cried  Luke,  and  taking  a  penny  from 
his  pocket  he  let  it  fall  into  the  water.  They  both 
fancied  they  heard  a  little  metallic  sound  when  it 
struck  the  bottom. 

Suddenly  Annie  gave  a  queer  excited  laugh,  shook 
herself  free  from  her  companion's  arm,  and  scrambled 
up  on  her  knees.  Luke  lay  back  on  the  rock  and 
gazed  in  wonder  at  her  flushed  cheeks  and  flashing 
eyes. 

"What's  the  matter,  child?"  he  enquired. 

She  fumbled  at  her  bosom,  and  Luke  noticed  for  the 
first  time  that  she  was  wearing  round  her  neck  a 
little  thin  metal  chain.  At  last  with  an  impatient 
movement  of  her  fingers  she  snapped  the  resisting 
cord  and  flung  it  into  the  tide.  Then  she  held  out 
to  Luke  a  small  golden  object,  which  glittered  in  the 
palm  of  her  hand.  It  was  a  weather-stained  ring, 
twisted  and  bent  out  of  all  shape. 


584  WOOD   AND   STONE 

"It's  her  ring!"  she  cried  exultantly.  "Crazy  Bert 
got  it  out  of  that  hole,  with  a  bit  of  bent  wire,  and 
Phyllis  squirmed  it  away  from  him  by  letting  him 
give  her  a  lift  in  the  wagon.  He  squeezed  her  dread- 
ful hard,  she  do  say,  and  tickled  her  awful  with 
straws  and  things,  but  before  evening  she  had  the 
ring  away  from  him.  You  can  bet  I  kissed  her  and 
thanked  her,  when  I  got  it!  Us  two  be  real  friends, 
as  you  might  call  it!  Phyllis,  cried,  in  the  night, 
dreaming  the  idiot  was  pinching  her,  and  she  not 
able  to  slap  'im  back.  But  I  got  the  ring,  and  there  't 
be,  Luke,  glittering-gold  as  ever,  though  'tis  sad 
bended  and  battered." 

Luke  made  a  movement  to  take  the  object,  but 
the  girl  closed  her  fingers  tightly  upon  it  and  held  it 
high  above  his  head.  With  her  arm  thus  raised  and 
the  glitter  of  sea  and  sun  upon  her  form,  she  resem- 
bled some  sweetly-carved  figure-head  on  the  bows  of 
a  ship.  The  wind  fanned  her  hot  cheeks  and  caressed, 
with  cool  touch,  her  splendid  coils  of  hair.  Luke  was 
quite  overcome  by  her  beauty,  and  could  only  stare 
at  her  in  dazed  amazement,  while  she  repeated,  in 
clear  ringing  tones,  the  words  of  the  old  country 
game. 

"My  lady's  lost  her  golden  ring; 

Her  golden  ring,  her  golden  ring; 
My  lady's  lost  her  golden  ring; 

I  pitch  upon  you  to  find  it!" 

The  song's  refrain  died  away  over  the  waves,  and 
was  answered  by  the  scream  of  an  astonished  cor- 
morant, and  by  a  mocking  shout  from  a  group  of 
idle  soldiers  on  the  grassy  terrace  above  the  cliff. 

"Shall  us  throw  her  ring  out  to  sea.^*"  cried  Annie. 


A   ROYAL   WATERING-PLACE     585 

"They  say  a  ring  lost  so,  means  sorrow  for  her  that 
owns  it.     Say  'yes,'  and  it's  gone,  Luke!" 

While  the  girl's  arm  swung  backwards  and  forwards 
above  him,  tlie  stone-carver's  thoughts  whirled  even 
more  rapidly  through  his  brain.  A  drastic  and  bold 
idea,  that  had  often  before  crossed  the  threshold  of 
his  consciousness,  now  assumed  a  most  dominant 
shape.     Why  not  ask  Annie  to  marry  him.? 

He  was  growing  a  little  weary  of  his  bachelor-life, 
Tlie  wayward  track  of  his  days  had  more  than  once, 
of  late,  seemed  to  have  reached  a  sort  of  climax. 
Why  not,  at  one  reckless  stroke,  end  this  epoch  of 
his  history,  and  launch  out  upon  another.''  His  close 
association  with  James  had  hitherto  stood  in  the  way 
of  any  such  step,  but  his  brother  had  fallen  recently 
into  such  fits  of  gloomy  reticence,  that  he  had  found 
himself  wondering  more  than  once  whether  such  a 
drastic  troubling  of  the  waters,  as  the  introduction 
of  a  girl  into  their  menage,  would  not  ease  the  situa- 
tion a  little.  It  was  not  for  a  moment  to  be  sup- 
posed that  he  and  James  could  separate.  If  Annie 
did  marry  him,  she  must  do  so  on  the  understanding 
of  his  brother's  living  with  them. 

Luke  began  to  review  in  his  mind  the  various  cot- 
tages in  Nevilton  which  might  prove  available  for  this 
adventure.  It  tickled  his  fancy  a  great  deal,  the 
thought  of  having  a  house  and  garden  of  his  own,  and 
he  was  shrewd  enough  to  surmise  that  of  all  his 
feminine  friends,  Annie  was  by  far  the  best  fitted  to 
perform  the  functions  of  the  good-tempered  companion 
of  a  philosophical  sentimentalist.  The  gentle  creature 
had  troubled  him  so  little  by  jealous  fits  in  her  role 
of    sweetheart,    that    it    did    not    present     itself     as 


586  WOOD  AND   STOXE 

probable  that  she  would  prove  a  shrewish  wife. 
Glancing  across  the  blue  water  to  the  great  Rock- 
Island  opposite  them,  Luke  came  rapidly  to  the  con- 
clusion that  he  would  take  the  risk  and  make  the 
eventful  plunge.  He  knew  enough  of  himself  to  have 
full  confidence  in  his  power  of  dealing  with  the  deli- 
cate art  of  matrimony,  and  the  very  difficulties  of  the 
situation,  implied  in  the  number  of  his  contemporary 
amours,  only  added  a  tang  and  piquancy  to  the 
enterprise. 

"Well,"  cried  Annie.  "Shall  us  throw  the  pretty 
lady's  ring  into  the  deep  sea?  It'll  mean  trouble 
for  her,  trouble  and  tears,  Luke!  Be  'ee  of  a  mind 
to  do  it,  or  be  'ee  not?  'Tis  your  hand  must  fling  it, 
and  with  the  flinging  of  it,  her  heart  '11  drop,  splash 
—  splash  —  into  deep  sorrow.  She'll  cry  her  eyes 
out,  for  this  'ere  job,  and  that's  the  truth  of  it, 
Luke  darling.  Be  'ee  ready  to  fling  it,  or  be  'ee 
not  ready?  There'll  be  no  getting  it  back,  once  us 
have  thro  wed  it  in." 

She  held  out  her  arm  towards  him  as  she  spoke, 
and  with  her  other  hand  pushed  back  her  hair  from 
her  forehead.  For  so  soft  and  tender  a  creature  as 
the  girl  was,  it  was  strange,  the  wild  Maenad-like 
look,  which  she  wore  at  that  moment.  She  might 
have  been  an  incarnation  of  the  avenging  deities  of 
sea  and  air,  threatening  disaster  to  some  unwitting 
Olympian. 

Luke  scrambled  to  his  feet,  and  seizing  her  wrist 
with  both  his  hands,  forced  her  fingers  apart,  and 
possessed  himself  of  the  equivocal  trinket. 

"If  I  throw  it,"  he  cried,  in  an  excited  tone,  "will 
you  be  my  wife,  Annie?" 


A  ROYAL  WATERING-PLACE     587 

At  this  unexpected  word  a  complete  collapse  over- 
took the  girl.  All  trace  of  colour  left  her  cheeks  and 
a  sudden  trembling  passed  through  her  limbs.  She 
staggered,  and  would  have  fallen,  if  Luke  had  not 
seized  her  in  his  arms. 

In  the  shock  of  saving  her,  the  stone-carver's  hand 
involuntarily  unclosed,  and  the  piece  of  gold,  slipping 
from  his  fingers,  fell  down  upon  the  slope  of  the  rock, 
and  sliding  over  its  edge,  sank  into  the  deep  water. 

"xlnnie!  Annie!  What  is  it,  dear?"  murmured 
Luke,  making  the  trembling  girl  sit  down  by  his  side, 
and  supporting  her  tenderly. 

For  her  only  answer  she  flung  her  arms  round  his 
neck  and  kissed  him  passionately  again  and  again.  It 
was  not  only  of  kisses  that  Luke  became  conscious, 
for,  as  she  pressed  him  to  her,  her  breast  heaved 
pitifully  under  her  print  frock,  and  when  she  let  him 
go,  the  taste  of  her  tears  was  in  his  mouth.  For  the 
first  time  in  his  life  the  queer  wish  entered  the  stone- 
carver's  mind  that  he  had  not,  in  his  day,  made  love 
quite  so  often. 

There  was  something  so  pure,  so  confiding,  and 
yet  so  passionately  tender,  about  little  Annie's 
abandonment,  that  it  produced,  in  the  epicurean 
youth's  soul,  a  most  quaint  sense  of  shame  and  em- 
barrassment. It  was  deliciously  sweet  to  him,  all 
the  same,  to  find  how,  beyond  expectation,  he  had 
made  so  shrewd  a  choice.  But  he  wished  some 
humorous  demon  at  the  back  of  his  mind  wouldn't 
call  up  before  him  at  that  moment  the  memory  of 
other  clinging  arms  and  lips. 

With  an  inward  grin  of  sardonic  commentary  upon 
his  melting  mood,  the  cynical  thought  passed  through 


588  WOOD   AND   STONE 

his  mind,  how  strange  it  was,  in  this  mortal  world, 
that  human  kisses  should  all  so  lamentably  resemble 
one  another,  and  that  human  tears  should  all  leave 
behind  them  the  same  salt  taste!  Life  was  indeed  a 
matter  of  "eternal  recurrence,"  and  whether  with 
Portland  and  its  war-ships  as  the  background,  or 
with  Nevilton  Mount  and  its  shady  woods,  the  same 
emotions  and  the  same  reactions  must  needs  come 
and  go,  with  the  same  inexorable  monotony! 

He  glanced  down  furtively  into  the  foara-flecked 
water,  but  there  was  no  sign  of  the  lost  ring.  The 
tide  seemed  to  have  turned  now,  and  the  sea  appeared 
less  calm.  Little  flukes  of  white  spray  surged  up 
intermittently  on  the  in-rolling  waves,  and  a  strong 
breath  of  wind,  rising  with  the  sinking  of  the  sun, 
blew  cool  and  fresh  upon  their  foreheads. 

"Her  ring's  gone,"  whispered  Annie,  pulling  down] 
her  sleeves  over  her  soft  arms,  and  holding  out  herj 
wrists,  for  him  to  fasten  the  bands,  "and  you  do] 
belong  to  none  but  I  now,  Luke.  When  shall  us  bel 
married,  dear?"  she  added,  pressing  her  cool  cheek] 
against  his,  and  running  her  fingers  through  his  hair. 

The  words,  as  well  as  the  gesture  that  accompanied] 
them,  jarred  upon  Luke's  susceptibilities. 

"Why  is  it,"  he  thought,  "that  girls  are  so  ex- 
traordinarily stupid  in  these  things?  Why  do  they  I 
always  seem  only  waiting  for  an  opportunity  to  drop 
their  piquancy  and  provocation,  and  become  confident, 
assured,  possessive,  complacent?  Have  I,"  he  said  to 
himself,  "made  a  horrible  blunder?  Shall  I  regret 
this  day  forever,  and  be  ready  to  give  anything  for 
those  fatal  words  not  to  have  been  uttered?" 

He   glanced  down   once  more  upon   the   brimming, 


A  ROYAL  WATERING-PLACE     589 

in-rushing  tide  that  covered  Glady's  ring.  Then  with 
a  jerk  he  pulled  out  his  watch. 

"Go  and  call  the  others,"  he  commanded,  "I'm 
going  to  have  a  dip  before  we  start." 

Annie  glanced  quickly  into  his  face,  but  reassured 
by  his  friendly  smile,  proceeded  to  obey  him,  with 
only  the  least  little  sigh. 

"Don't  drown  yourself,  dear,"  she  called  back  to 
him,  as  she  made  her  way  cautiously  across  the  rocks. 

Luke  hurriedly  undressed,  and  standing  for  a  mo- 
ment, a  slim  golden  figure,  in  the  horizontal  sunlight, 
swung  himself  lightly  down  over  the  rock's  edge  and 
struck  out  boldly  for  the  open  sea. 

With  vigorous  strokes  he  wrestled  with  the  inflow- 
ing tide.  Wave  after  wave  splashed  against  his 
face.  Pieces  of  floating  sea-weed  and  wisps  of  surf 
clung  to  his  arms  and  hair.  But  he  held  resolutely 
on,  breathing  deep  breaths  of  liberty  and  exultation, 
and  drinking  in,  as  if  from  a  vast  wide-brimmed  cup, 
the  thrilling  spaciousness  of  air  and  sky. 

Girls,  love-making,  marriage,  —  the  whole  com- 
plication of  the  cloying  erotic  world,  —  fell  away  from 
him,  like  the  too-soft  petals  of  some  great  stifling 
velvet-bosomed  flower;  and  naked  of  desire,  as  he  was 
naked  of  human  clothes,  he  gave  himself  up  to  the 
free,  pure  elements.  In  later  hours,  when  once  more 
the  old  reiterated  tune  was  beating  time  in  his  brain, 
he  recalled  with  regret  the  large  emancipation  of  that 
moment. 

As  he  splashed  and  spluttered,  and  turned  over 
deliciously  in  the  water,  like  some  exultant  human- 
limbed  merman,  returning,  after  a  long  inland  exile, 
to  his  natural  home,  he  found  his  thoughts  fantastic- 


590  WOOD   AND   STONE 

ally  reverting  to  those  queer,  mad  ideas,  about  the 
evil  power  of  the  stone  they  both  worked  upon,  to 
which  James  Andersen  had  given  expression  when  his 
wits  were  astray.  Here  at  any  rate,  in  the  solid 
earth's  eternal  antagonist,  was  a  power  capable  of 
destroying  every  sinister  spell. 

He  remorsefully  blamed  himself  that  he  had  not 
compelled  his  brother  to  come  down  with  them  to 
the  sea.  He  recalled  the  half-hearted  invitation  he 
had  extended  to  James,  not  altogether  sorry  to  have 
it  refused,  and  not  repeating  it.  He  had  been  a  selfish 
fool,  he  thought.  Were  James  swimming  now  by  his 
side,  his  pleasure  in  that  violet-coloured  coast-line  and 
that  titanic  rock-monster,  would  have  been  doubled 
by  the  revival  of  indescribably  appealing  memo- 
ries. 

He  made  a  vigorous  resolution  that  never  again  — 
whatever  mood  his  brother  might  be  in  —  would  he 
allow  the  perilous  lure  of  exquisite  femininity,  to  come 
between    him    and    the   nobler  classic    bond,    of    the 
love  that  "passeth  the  love  of  women." 

Conscious  that  he  must  return  without  a  moment's 
further  delay  if  they  were  to  catch  their  train,  he 
swung  round  in  the  water  and  let  the  full  tide  bear 
him  shoreward. 

On  the  way  back  he  was  momentarily  assailed  by 
a  slight  touch  of  cramp  in  his  legs.  It  quickly 
passed,  but  it  was  enough  to  give  the  life-enamoured 
youth  a  shock  of  cold  panic.  Death?  That,  after 
all,  he  thought,  was  the  only  intolerable  thing.  As 
long  as  one  breathed  and  moved,  in  this  mad  world, 
nothing  that  could  happen  greatly  mattered!  One 
was  conscious,  —  one  could  note  the  acts  and  scenes 


A  ROYAL  WATERINCx-PLACE     591 

of  the  incredible  drama;  and  in  this  mere  fact  of 
consciousness,  one  could  endure  anything.  But  to  be 
dead,  —  to  be  deprived  of  the  sweet  air,  —  that 
remained,  that  must  always  remain,  the  one  absolute 
Terror ! 

Reaching  his  starting-place,  Luke  was  amused  to 
observe  that  the  tide  was  already  splashing  over 
their  rock,  and  in  another  minute  or  two  would  have 
drenched  his  clothes.  He  chuckled  to  himself  as  he 
noted  how  this  very  practical  possibility  jerked  his 
mind  into  a  completely  different  vein.  Love,  philoso- 
phy, friendship,  all  tend  to  recede  to  the  very  depths 
of  one's  invaluable  consciousness,  when  there  appears 
a  risk  of  returning  to  a  railway  station  in  a  drenched 
shirt. 

He  collected  his  possessions  with  extreme  rapidity, 
and  holding  them  in  a  bundle  at  arm's  length  from 
his  dripping  body,  clambered  hastily  up  the  shore, 
and  humorously  waving  back  his  modest  companions, 
who  were  now  being  chaffed  by  quite  a  considerable 
group  of  soldiers  on  the  cliff  above,  he  settled  himself 
down  on  a  bank  of  sea-weed  and  began  hurriedly  to 
dry,  using  his  waistcoat  as  a  towel. 

He  was  soon  completely  dressed,  and,  all  four  of 
them  a  little  agitated,  began  a  hasty  rush  for  the 
train. 

Phyllis  and  Polly  scolded  him  all  the  way  without 
mercy.  Had  he  brought  them  out  here,  to  keep  them 
in  the  place  all  night.?  What  would  their  mothers 
say,  and  their  fathers,  and  their  brothers,  and  their 
aunts? 

Annie,  alone  of  the  party,  remained  silent,  her  full 
rich  lips  closed  like  a  sleepy  peony,  and   her  heavy- 


592  WOOD   AND   STONE 

lidded  velvety  eyes  casting  little  timid  affectionate 
glances  at  her  so  unexpectedly  committed  lover. 

The  crossness  of  the  two  younger  girls  grew  in 
intensity  when,  the  ferry  safely  crossed,  Luke  dragged 
them  at  remorseless  speed  through  the  crowded  town. 
Pitiful  longing  eyes  were  cast  back  at  the  glittering 
shops  and  the  magical  picture-shows.  Why  had  he 
taken  them  to  those  horrid  rocks?  Why  hadn't  he 
given  them  time  to  look  at  the  shop-windows? 
They'd  promised  faithfully  to  bring  back  something 
for  Dad  and  Betty  and  Queenie  and  Dick. 

Phyllis  had  ostentatiously  flung  into  the  harbour 
her  elaborately  selected  bunch  of  sea-flora,  and  the 
poor  ill-used  plants,  hot  from  the  girl's  hand,  were 
now  tossing  up  and  down  amid  the  tarry  keels  and 
swaying  hawsers.  The  girl  regretted  this  action 
now,  —  regretted  it  more  and  more  vividly  as  the 
station  drew  near.  Mummy  always  loved  a  bunch 
o'  flowers,  and  they  were  so  pretty!  She  was  sure  it 
was  Luke  who  had  made  her  lose  them.  He  had 
pushed  her  so  roughly  up  those  nasty  steps. 

Tears  were  in  Polly's  eyes  as,  bedraggled  and 
panting,  they  emerged  on  the  open  square  where  the 
gentle  monarch  looks  down  from  his  stone  horse. 
There  were  sailors  now,  mixed  with  the  crowd  on  the 
esplanade,  —  such  handsome  boys!  It  was  cruel,  it 
was  wicked,  that  they  had  to  go,  just  when  the  real 
sport  began. 

The  wretched  Jubilee  Clock  —  how  they  all  hated 
its  trim  appearance!  —  had  a  merciless  finger  pointing 
at  the  very  minute  their  train  was  due  to  start,  as 
Luke  hurried  them  round  the  street-corner.  Polly 
fairly   began  to  cry,   as  they  dragged  her  from  the 


A  ROYAL  WATERING-PLACE     593 

lluring  scene.  She  was  certain  that  the  Funny  Men 
t^ere  just  going  to  begin.  She  was  sure  that  that 
listant  drum  meant  Punch  and  Judy! 

Breathlessly  they  rushed  upon  the  platform. 
Vildly,  with  anxious  eyes  and  gasping  tones,  they 
nquired  of  the  first  official  they  encountered,  whether 
he  Yeoborough  train  had  gone. 

Observing  the  beauty  of  the  three  troubled  girls, 
his  placid  authority  proceeded  to  tantalize  them, 
sking  "what  the  hurry  was,"  and  whether  they 
wanted  a  "special,"  and  other  maddening  questions, 
t  was  only  when  Luke,  who  had  rushed  furiously  to 
be  platform's  remote  end,  was  observed  to  be  cheer- 
jlly  and  serenely  returning,  that  Phyllis  recovered 
erself  sufficiently  to  give  their  disconcerted  insulter 
^hat  she  afterwards  referred  to  as  "a  bit  of  lip  in 
sturn  for  his  blarsted  sauce." 

No,  —  the  train  would  not  be  starting  for  another 
sn  minutes.     Fortunate  indeed  was  this  accident  of 

chance  delay  on  the  Great  Western  Railroad,  —  the 
lost  punctual  of  all  railroads  in  the  world,  —  for  it 
mded  Luke  with  three  happy,  completely  recovered 
amsels,  and  in  a  compartment  all  to  themselves, 
'^hen  the  train  did  move  at  last.  Abundantly 
)rtified  with  ginger-pop  and  sponge-cake,  —  how 
losely  Luke  associated  the  savour  of  both  these 
jfreshments  with  such  an  excursion  as  this !  — -  and 
jrther  cheered  by  the  secure  possession  of  chocolates, 
ananas,  "Ally  Sloper's  Half  Holiday,"  and  the  "Illus- 
rated  London  News,"  —  the  girls  romped,  and  sang, 
nd  teased  each  other  and  Luke,  and  whispered 
ndearing  mockeries  out  of  the  window  to  sedately 
nconscious  gentlemen,  at  every  station  where  they 


594  WOOD   AND   STONE 

stopped  until  the  aged  guard's  paternal  benevolence 
changed  to  irritable  crossness,  and  Luke  himself  was 
not  altogether  sorry  when  the  familiar  landscape  of 
Yeoborough,  dusky  and  shadowy  in  the  twilight, 
hove  in  sight. 

Little  Polly  left  them  at  the  second  of  the  two 
Yeoborough  stations,  and  the  others,  crowding  at 
the  window  to  wave  their  goodbyes,  were  carried  on 
in  the  same  train  to  Nevilton. 

During  this  final  five  minutes,  Annie  slipped  softly 
down  upon  her  lover's  knees  and  seemed  to  wish  to 
indicate  to  Phyllis,  without  the  use  of  words,  that  her 
relations  with  their  common  friend  were  now  on  a 
new  plane,  —  at  once  more  innocent  and  less  reserved. 


CHAPTER   XXIII 
AVE  ATQUE  VALE! 

JAMES  ANDERSEN  lay  dead  in  the  brothers' 
little  bedroom  at  the  station-master's  cottage. 
It  could  not  be  maintained  that  his  face  wore  the 
unruffled  calm  conventionally  attributed  to  mortality's 
last  repose.  On  the  other  hand,  his  expression  was  not 
that  of  one  who  has  gone  down  in  hopeless  despair. 

What  his  look  really  conveyed  to  his  grief-worn 
brother,  as  he  hung  over  him  all  that  August  night, 
was  the  feeling  that  he  had  been  struck  in  mid- 
contest,  with  equal  chance  of  victory  or  defeat,  and 
with  the  hidelible  imprint  upon  his  visage  of  the  stress 
and  strain  of  the  terrific  struggle. 

It  was  a  long  and  strange  vigil  that  Luke  found 
himself  thus  bound  to  keep,  when  the  first  paroxysm 
of  his  grief  had  subsided  and  his  sympathetic  landlady 
had  left  him  alone  with  his  dead. 

He  laughed  aloud,  —  a  merciless  little  laugh,  —  at 
one  point  in  the  night,  to  note  how  even  this  blow, 
rending  as  it  did  the  very  ground  beneath  his  feet, 
had  yet  left  quite  untouched  and  untamed  his  irre- 
sistible instinct  towards  self-analysis.  Not  a  single 
one  of  the  innumerable,  and  in  many  cases  astound- 
ing, thoughts  that  passed  through  his  mind,  but  he 
watched  it,  and  isolated  it,  and  played  with  it,  —  just 
in  the  old  way. 

Luke    was    not    by    any    means    struck    dumb    or 


596  WOOD  AND   STONE 

paralyzed  by  this  event.  His  intelligence  had  never 
been  more  acute,  or  his  senses  more  responsive,  than 
they  remained  through  those  long  hours  of  watching. 

It  is  true  he  could  neither  eat  nor  sleep.  The  influ- 
ence of  the  motionless  figure  beside  him  seemed  to 
lie  in  a  vivid  and  abnormal  stimulation  of  all  his 
intellectual  faculties. 

Not  a  sound  arose  from  the  sleeping  house,  from  < 
the  darkened  fields,  from  the  distant  village,  but  he  ^ 
noted  it  and  made  a  mental  record  of  its  cause.  He  \ 
kept  two  candles  alight  at  his  brother's  head,  three 
times  refilling  the  candlesticks,  as  though  the  gutter- 
ing and  hissing  of  the  dwindling  flames  would  tease 
and  disturb  the  dead. 

He  had  been  careful  to  push  the  two  windows  of 
the  room  wide  open;  but  the  night  was  so  still  that' 
not  a  breath  of  wind  entered  to   make  the  candles 
flicker,  or  to  lift  the  edge  of  the  white  sheet  stretched 
beneath   his   brother's  bandaged  chin.     This   horrible 
bandage,  —  one    of    the    little    incidents    that    Luke 
marked  as  unexpectedly  ghastly,  —  seemed  to  slip  its 
knot  at  a  certain  moment,   causing  the  dead   man's, 
mouth    to    fall    open,    in    a    manner    that    made    the! 
watcher   shudder,   so   suggestive   did   it   seem   of  onej 
about  to  utter  a  cry  for  help. 

Luke  noted,  as  another  factor  in  the  phenomena  of 
death,  the  peculiar  nature  of  the  coldness  of  his 
brother's  skin,  as  he  bent  down  once  and  again  to 
touch  his  forehead.  It  was  different  from  the  coldness 
of  water  or  ice  or  marble.  It  was  a  clammy  coldness; 
the  coldness  of  a  substance  that  was  neither  —  in  the 
words  of  the  children's  game  —  "animal,  vegetable, 
nor  mineral." 


I 


AVE  ATQUE   VALE  597 

Luke  remembered  the  story  of  that  play  of  Web- 
iter's,  in  which  the  unhappy  heroine,  in  the  blank 
larkness  of  her  dungeon,  is  presented  with  a  dead 
land  to  caress.  The  abominably  wicked  wish  crossed 
lis  mind  once,  as  he  unclosed  those  stark  fingers,  that 
le  could  cause  the  gentle  Lacrima,  whom  he  regarded, 
—  not  altogether  fairly,  —  as  responsible  for  his 
)rother's  death,  to  feel  the  touch  of  such  a  hand. 

There  came  over  him,  at  other  times,  as  he  inhaled 
he  cool,  hushed  air  from  the  slumbering  fields,  and 
urveyed  the  great  regal  planet,  —  Mr.  Romer's  star, 
le  thought  grimly,  —  as  it  hung  so  formidably  close 
o  the  silvery  pallid  moon,  a  queer  dreamy  feeling 
hat  the  whole  thing  were  a  scene  in  a  play  or  a 
tory,  absolutely  unreal;  and  that  he  would  only 
lave  to  rouse  himself  and  shake  off  the  unnatural 
pell,  to  have  his  brother  with  him  again,  alive  and  in 
ull  consciousness. 

The  odd  thing  about  it  was  that  he  found  himself 
efusing  to  believe  that  this  was  his  brother  at  all,  — 
his  mask  beneath  the  white  sheet,  —  and  even 
ancying  that  at  any  moment  the  familiar  voice 
aight  call  to  him  from  the  garden,  and  he  have  to 
lescend  to  unlock  the  door. 

That  thought  of  his  brother's  voice  sent  a  pang 
hrough  him  of  sick  misgiving.  Surely  it  couldn't 
te  possible,  that  never,  not  through  the  whole  of 
ternity,  would  he  hear  that  voice  again? 

He  moved  to  the  window  and  listened.  Owls  were 
looting  somewhere  up  at  Wild  Pine,  and  from  the 
►astures  towards  Hullaway  came  the  harsh  cry  of  a 
light-jar. 

He  gazed  up  at  the   glittering    heavens,  sprinkled 


598  AYOOD   AND   STONE 

with  those  proud  constellations  whose  identity  it  was 
one  of  his  pastimes  to  recognize.  How  little  they 
cared!  How  appallingly  little  they  cared!  What  a 
farce,  what  an  obscene,  unpardonable  farce,  the  whole 
business  was! 

He  caught  the  sound  of  an  angry  bark  in  some 
distant  yard. 

Luke  cursed  the  irrelevant  intrusive  noise.  "Ah! 
thou  vile  Larva!"  he  muttered.  "What!  Shall  a  dog, 
a  cat,  a  rat,  have  life;    and  thou  no  breath  at  all?" 

He  leant  far  out  of  the  window,  breathing  the 
perfumes  of  the  night.  He  noticed,  as  an  interesting 
fact,  that  it  was  neither  the  phloxes  nor  the  late  roses 
whose  scent  filled  the  air,  but  that  new  exotic  tobacco- 
plant,  —  a  thing  whose  sticky,  quickly-fading,  trum- 
pet-shaped petals  were  one  of  his  brother's  especial 
aversions. 

The  immense  spaces  of  the  night,  as  they  carried 
his   gaze   onward   from   one   vast   translunar   sign    to 
another,    filled    him    with    a    strange    feeling    of    the 
utter     unimportance     of     any     earthly     event.     The 
Mythology  of  Power  and  the  Mj'thology  of  Sacrifice 
might  wrestle  in  desperate  contention  for  the  mastery : 
but  what  mattered,  in  view  of  this  great  dome   whicli 
overshadowed    them,    the    victory    or    the    defeat    o 
either.''     Mythologies    were    they    both;     both    wovei 
out  of  the  stuff  of  dreams,   and  both  vanishing  lib 
dreams,  in  the  presence  of  this  stark  image  upon  thj 
bed! 

He  returned  to  his  brother's  side,  and  rocked  himj 
self  up  and  down  on  his  creaking  bedroom  chaiij 
"Dead  and  gone!"  he  muttered,  "dead  and  gone!" 

It  was  easy  to  deal  in  vague  mystic  speculatioii 


AVE  ATQUE  VALE  599 

But  what  relief  could  he  derive,  he  who  wanted  his 
brother  back  as  he  was,  with  his  actual  tones,  and 
vays  and  looks,  from  any  problematic  chance  that 
;ome  thin  "spiritual  principle,"  or  ideal  wraith,  of  the 
nan  were  now  wandering  through  remote,  unearthly 
egions?  The  darling  of  his  soul  —  the  heart  of  his 
leart  —  had  become  forever  this  appalling  waxen 
mage,  this  thing  that  weighed  upon  him  with  its 
)resence ! 

Luke  bent  over  the  dead  man.  What  a  personality, 
vhat  a  dominant  and  oppressive  personality,  a  corpse 
las!  It  is  not  the  personality  of  the  living  man,  but 
mother  —  a  quite  different  one  —  masquerading  in 
lis  place. 

Luke  felt  almost  sure  that  this  husk,  this  shell, 
his  mockery  of  the  real  James,  was  possessed  of  some 
ietestable  consciousness  of  its  own,  a  consciousness 
IS  remote  from  that  of  the  man  he  loved  as  that 
)allid  forehead  with  the  deep  purple  gash  across  it, 
vas  remote  from  the  dear  head  whose  form  he  knew 
lo  well.     How  crafty,  how  malignant,  a  corpse  was! 

He  returned  to  his  uncomfortable  chair  and  pon- 
lered  upon  what  this  loss  meant  to  him.  It  was 
ike  the  burying  alive  of  half  his  being.  How  could 
le  have  thoughts,  sensations,  feelings,  fancies;  how 
;ould  he  have  loves  and  hates,  without  James  to  tell 
hem  to?  A  cold  sick  terror  of  life  passed  through 
lim,  of  life  without  this  companion  of  his  soul.  He 
elt  like  a  child  lost  in  some  great  forest. 

"Daddy  James!  Daddy  James!"  he  cried,  "I  want 
^ou;  —  I  want  you!" 

He  found  himself  repeating  this  infantile  conjura- 
ion  over  and  over  again.     He  battered  with  clenched 


600  ^YOOD   AND   STOXE 

hand  upon  the  adamantine  wall  of  silence.  But  there 
was  neither  sign  nor  voice  nor  token  nor  "any  that 
regarded."  There  was  only  the  beating  of  his  own 
heart  and  the  ticking  of  the  watch  upon  the  table. 
And  all  the  while,  with  its  malignant  cunning,  the 
corpse  regarded  him,  mute,  derisive,  contemptuous. 

He  thought,  lightly  and  casually,  as  one  who  at  the 
grave  of  all  he  loves  plucks  a  handful  of  flowers,  of 
the  girls  he  had  just  parted  from,  and  of  Gladys  and 
all  his  other  infatuations.  How  impossible  it  seemed 
to  him  that  a  woman  —  a  girl  —  that  any  one  of 
these  charming,  distracting  creatures  —  should  strike 
a  man  down  by  their  loss,  as  he  was  now  stricken 
down. 

He  tried  to  imagine  what  he  would  feel  if  it  were 
Annie  lying  there,  under  the  sheet,  in  place  of  James. 
He  would  be  sorry;  he  would  be  bitterly  sad;  he  would 
be  angry  with  the  callous  heavens;  but  as  long  as 
James  w^ere  near,  as  long  as  James  were  by  his  side,  — 
his  life  would  still  be  his  life.  He  would  suffer,  and 
the  piteous  tragedy  of  the  thing  would  smite  and 
sicken  him;  but  it  would  not  be  the  same.  It  would 
not  be  like  this! 

What  was  there  in  the  love  of  a  man  that  made 
the  loss  of  it  —  for  him  at  least  —  so  different  a 
thing?  Was  it  that  with  women,  however  much  one 
loved  them,  there  was  something  equivocal,  evasive, 
intangible;  something  made  up  of  illusion  and 
sorcery,  of  magic  and  moonbeams;  that  since  it  could 
never  be  grasped  as  firmly  as  the  other,  could  never 
be  as  missed  as  the  other,  when  the  grasp  had  to 
relax.''  Or  was  it  that,  for  all  their  clear  heads,  — 
heads  so  much  clearer  than  poor  James' !  —  and  for 


AVE  ATQUE   VALE GOl 

all  their  spiritual  purity,  —  there  was  lacking  in 
them  a  certain  indescribable  mellowness  of  sympathy, 
a  certain  imaginative  generosity  and  tolerance,  which 
meant  the  true  secret  of  the  life  lived  in  com- 
mon? 

From  the  thought  of  his  girls,  Luke's  mind  wan- 
dered back  to  the  thought  of  what  the  constant 
presence  of  his  brother  as  a  background  to  his  life 
had  really  meant.  Even  as  he  sat  there,  gazing  so 
hopelessly  at  the  image  on  the  bed,  he  found  himself 
on  the  point  of  resolving  to  explain  all  these  matters 
to  James  and  hear  his  opinion  upon  them. 

By  degrees,  as  the  dawn  approached,  the  two 
blank  holes  into  cavernous  darkness  which  the 
windows  of  the  chamber  had  become,  changed  their 
character.  A  faint  whitish-blue  transparency  grew 
visible  within  their  enclosing  frames,  and  something 
ghostly  and  phantom-like,  the  stealthy  invasion  of  a 
new  presence,  glided  into  the  room. 

This  palpable  presence,  the  frail  embryo  of  a  new 
day,  gave  to  the  yellow  candle-flames  a  queer  sickly 
pallor  and  intensified  to  a  chalky  opacity  the  dead 
whiteness  of  the  sheet,  and  of  the  folded  hands 
resting  upon  it.  It  was  with  the  sound  of  the  first 
twittering  birds,  and  the  first  cock-crow,  that  the  ice- 
cold  spear  of  desolation  pierced  deepest  of  all  into 
Luke's  heart.  He  shivered,  and  blew  out  the  candles. 
A  curious  feeling  possessed  him  that,  in  a  sudden 
ghastly  withdrawal,  that  other  James,  the  James  he 
had  been  turning  to  all  night  in  tacit  familiar  appeal, 
had  receded  far  out  of  his  reach.  From  indistinct 
horizons  his  muffled  voice  moaned  for  a  while,  like 
the  wind  in  the  willows  of  Lethe,  and  then  died  away 


602  AYOOD  AND  STONE 

in  a  thin  long-drawn  whisper.  Luke  was  alone; 
alone  with  his  loss  and  alone  with  the  image  of 
death. 

He  moved  to  the  window  and  looked  out.  Streaks 
of  watery  gold  were  already  visible  above  the  eastern 
uplands,  and  a  filmy  sea  of  white  mist  swayed  and 
fluttered  over  the  fields. 

All  these  things  together,  the  white  mist,  the  white 
walls  of  the  room,  the  white  light,  the  white  covering 
on  the  body,  seemed  to  fall  upon  the  worn-out 
watcher  with  a  weight  of  irresistible  finality.  James 
was  dead  —  "gone  to  his  death-bed;  —  he  never 
would  come  again!" 

Turning  his  back  wearily  upon  those  golden  sky- 
streaks,  that  on  any  other  occasion  would  have 
thrilled  him  with  their  magical  promise,  Lul^e  observed 
the  dead  bodies  of  no  less  than  five  large  moths 
grouped  around  the  extinct  candles.  Two  of  them 
were  "currant-moths,"  one  a  "yellow  under- wing,"  and 
the  others  beyond  his  entomological  knowledge. 
This  was  the  only  holocaust,  then,  allowed  to  the 
dead  man.  Five  moths!  And  the  Milky  Way  had 
looked  down  upon  their  destruction  with  the  same 
placidity  as  upon  the  cause  of  the  vigil  that  slew 
them. 

Luke  felt  a  sudden  desire  to  escape  from  this  room, 
every  object  of  which  bore  now,  in  dimly  obscure 
letters,  the  appalling  handwriting  of  the  ministers  of 
fate.  He  crept  on  tiptoe  to  the  door  and  opened  it 
stealthily.  Making  a  mute  valedictory  gesture  towards 
the  bed,  he  shut  the  door  behind  him  and  slipped 
down  the  little  creaking  stairs. 

He  entered  his  landlady's  kitchen,  and  as  silently 


i 


AVE   ATQUE   VALE  603 

as  he  could  collected  a  bundle  of  sticks  and  lit  the 
fire.  The  crackling  flames  produced  an  infinitesimal 
lifting  of  the  cloud  which  weighed  upon  his  spirit. 
He  warmed  his  hands  before  the  blaze.  From  some 
remote  depth  within  him,  there  began  to  awake  once 
more  the  old  inexpugnable  zest  for  life. 

Piling  some  pieces  of  coal  upon  the  burning  wood 
and  drawing  the  kettle  to  the  edge  of  the  hob,  he  left 
the  kitchen;  and  crossing  the  little  hall,  impregnated 
with  a  thin  sickly  odor  of  lamp-oil,  he  shot  back  the 
blots  of  the  house-door,  and  let  himself  out  into  the 
morning  air. 

A  flock  of  starlings  fluttered  away  over  the  meadow, 
and  from  the  mist-wreathed  recesses  of  Nevilton 
House  gardens  came  the  weird  defiant  scream  of  a 
peacock. 

He  glanced  furtively,  as  if  such  a  glance  were 
almost  sacrilegious,  at  the  open  windows  of  his 
brother's  room;  and  then  pushing  open  the  garden- 
gate  emerged  into  the  dew-drenched  field.  He  could 
not  bring  himself  to  leave  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
house,  but  began  pacing  up  and  down  the  length  of 
the  meadow,  from  the  hedge  adjacent  to  the  railway, 
to  that  elm-shadowed  corner,  where  not  so  many 
weeks  ago  he  had  distracted  himself  with  Annie  and 
Phyllis.  He  continued  this  reiterated  pacing,  —  his 
tired  brain  giving  itself  up  to  the  monotony  of  a 
heart-easing  movement,  —  until  the  sun  had  risen 
quite  high  above  the  horizon.  The  great  fiery  orb 
pleased  him  well,  in  its  strong  indifference,  as  with  its 
lavish  beams  it  dissipated  the  mist  and  touched  the 
tree-trunks  with  ruddy  colour. 

"Ha!"  he  cried  aloud,  "the  sun  is  the  only  God! 


604  WOOD  AND  STONE 

To  the  sun  must  all  flesh  turn,  if  it  would  live  and 
not  die!" 

Half  ashamed  of  this  revival  of  his  spirits  he  obeyed 
the  beckoning  gestures  of  the  station-master's  wife, 
who  now  appeared  at  the  door. 

The  good  woman's  sympathy,  though  not  of  the 
silent  or  tactful  order,  was  well  adapted  to  prevent 
the  immediate  return  of  any  hopeless  grief. 

'"Tis  good  it  were  a  Saturday  when  the  Lord  took 
him,"  she  said,  pouring  out  for  her  lodger  a  steaming 
cup  of  excellent  tea,  and  buttering  a  slice  of  bread; 
"he'll  have  Sunday  to  lie  up  in.  It  be  best  of  all 
luck  for  these  poor  stiff  ones,  to  have  church  bells 
rung  over  'em." 

"I  pray  Heaven  I  shan't  have  any  visitors  today," 
remarked  Luke,  sipping  his  tea  and  stretching  out  his 
feet  to  the  friendly  blaze. 

"That  ye'll  be  sure  to  have!"  answered  the  woman; 
"and  the  sooner  ye  puts  on  a  decent  black  coat,  and 
washes  and  brushes  up  a  bit,  the  better  'twill  be  for 
all  concerned.  I  always  tells  my  old  man  that  when 
he  do  fall  stiff,  like  what  your  brother  be,  I  shall  put 
on  my  black  silk  gown  and  sit  in  the  front  parlour 
with  a  bottle  of  elder  wine,  ready  for  all  sorts  and 
conditions." 

Luke  rose,  with  a  piece  of  bread-and-butter  in  his 
hand,  and  surveyed  himself  in  the  mirror. 

"Yes,  I  do  need  a  bit  of  tidying,"  he  said.  "Per- 
haps you  wouldn't  mind  my  shaving  down  here?" 

Even  as  he  spoke  the  young  stone-carver  could  not 
help  recalling  those  sinister  stories  of  dead  men  whose 
beards  have  grown  in  their  coffins.  The  landlady 
nodded. 


AVE   ATQUE   VALE  605 

"I'll  make  'ee  up  a  bed  for  these  'ere  days,"  she 
said,  "in  Betty's  room.  As  for  shaving  and  such  like, 
please  yourself,  Master  Luke.  This  house  be  thy 
house  with  him  lying  up  there." 

Between  nine  and  ten  o'clock  Luke's  first  visitor 
made  his  appearance.  This  was  Mr.  Clavering,  who 
showed  himself  neither  surprised  nor  greatly  pleased 
to  find  the  bereft  brother  romping  with  the  children 
under  the  station-master's  apple-trees. 

"I  cannot  express  to  you  the  sympathy  I  feel," 
said  the  clergyman,  "with  your  grief  under  this 
great  blow.  Words  on  these  occasions  are  of  little 
avail.  But  I  trust  you  know  where  to  turn  for  true 
consolation." 

"Thank  you,  sir,"  replied  Luke,  who,  though  care- 
fully shaved  and  washed,  still  wore  the  light  grey 
flannel  suit  of  his  Saturday's  excursion. 

"Give  Mr.  Clavering  an  apple,  Lizzie!"  he  added. 

"I  wouldn't  for  a  moment,"  continued  the  Reverend 
Hugh,  "intrude  upon  you  with  any  impertinent 
questions.  But  I  could  not  help  wondering  as  I 
walked  through  the  village  how  this  tragedy  would 
affect  you.  I  prayed  it  might,"  —  here  he  laid  a 
grave  and  pastoral  hand  on  the  young  man's  arm,  — 
"I  prayed  it  might  give  you  a  different  attitude  to 
those  high  matters  which  we  have  at  various  times 
discussed  together.     Am  I  right  in  my  hope,  Luke?" 

Never  had  the  superb  tactlessness  of  Nevilton's 
\'icar  betrayed  him  more  deplorably. 

"Death  is  death,  Mr.  Clavering,"  replied  the 
stone-carver,  lifting  up  the  youngest  of  the  children 
and  placing  her  astride  on  an  apple-branch.  "It's 
about  the  worst  blow  fate's  ever  dealt  me.     But  when 


606  WOOD  AND   STONE 

it  comes  to  any  change  in   my  ideas,  —  no!     I  can't 
say  that  I've  altered." 

"I  understand  you  weren't  with  him  when  this 
terrible  thing  happened,"  said  the  clergyman.  "They 
tell  me  he  was  picked  up  by  strangers.  There'll  be 
no  need,  I  trust,  for  an  inquest,  or  anything  of  that 
kind?" 

Luke  shook  his  head.  "The  doctor  was  up  here 
last  night.  The  thing's  clear  enough.  His  mind 
must  have  given  way  again.  He's  had  those  curst 
quarries  on  his  nerves  for  a  long  while  past.  I  wish 
to  the  devil  —  I  beg  your  pardon,  sir!  —  I  wish  I'd 
taken  him  to  Weymouth  with  me.  I  was  a  fool  not 
to  insist  on  that."  - 

"Yes,  I  heard  you  were  away,"  remarked  Hugh, 
with  a  certain  caustic  significance  in  his  tone.  "One 
or  two  of  our  young  friends  were  with  you,  I  believe.''" 

Luke  did  not  fail  to  miss  the  implication,  and  he  hit 
back  vindictively. 

"I  understand  you've  had  an  interesting  little  ser- 
vice this  morning,  sir,  or  perhaps  it's  yet  to  come  off.' 
I  can't  help  being  a  bit  amused  when  I  think  of  it!" 

An  electric  shock  of  anger  thrilled  through  Claver- 
ing's  frame.  Controlling  himself  with  a  heroic  effort, 
he  repelled  the  malignant  taunt. 

"I  didn't  know  you  concerned  yourself  with  these 
observances,  Andersen,"  he  remarked.  "But  you're 
quite  right.  I've  just  this  minute  come  from  receiving 
Miss  Romer  into  our  church.  Miss  Traffio  was  with 
her.  Both  young  ladies  were  greatly  agitated  over 
this  unhappy  occurrence.  In  fact  it  cast  quite  a 
gloom  over  what  otherwise  is  one  of  the  most  beauti-  | 
ful  incidents  of  all,  in  our  ancient  ritual."  i 


AVE  ATQUE   VALE  607 

Luke  swung  the  little  girl  on  the  bough  backwards 
and  forwards.  The  other  children,  retired  to  a 
discreet  distance,  stared  at  the  colloquy  with  wide- 
open  eyes. 

"This  baptizing  of  adults,"  continued  Luke,  — 
"you  call  'em  adults,  don't  you,  on  these  occasions.'*  — 
is  really  a  little  funny,  isn't  it?" 

"Funny!"  roared  the  angry  priest.  "No,  sir,  it 
isn't  funny!  The  saving  of  an  immortal  soul  by 
God's  most  sacred  sacrament  may  not  appeal  to  you 
infidels  as  an  essential  ceremony,  —  but  only  a  thor- 
oughly vulgar  and  philistine  mind  could  call  it 
funny!" 

"I'm  afraid  we  shall  never  agree  on  these  topics, 
Mr.  Clavering,"  replied  Luke  calmly.  "But  it  was 
most  kind  of  you  to  come  up  and  see  me.  I  really 
appreciate  it.  Would  it  be  possible,"  —  his  voice 
took  a  lower  and  graver  tone,  —  "for  my  brother's 
funeral  to  be  performed  on  Wednesday?  I  should  be 
very  grateful  to  you,  sir,  if  that  could  be  arranged." 

The  young  vicar  frowned  and  looked  slightly 
disconcerted.  "What  time  would  you  wish  it  to  be, 
Andersen?"  he  enquired.  "I  ask  you  this,  because 
Wednesday  is  —  er  —  unfortunately  —  the  date  fixed 
for  another  of  these  ceremonies  that  you  scoff  at. 
The  Lord  Bishop  comes  to  Nevilton  then.  It  is  his 
own  wish.  I  should  myself  have  preferred  a  later 
date." 

"Ha!  the  confirmation!"  ejaculated  Luke,  with  a 
bitter  little  laugh.  "You're  certainly  bent  on  striking 
while  the  iron's  hot,  Mr.  Clavering.  May  I  ask  what 
hour  has  been  fixed  for  this  beautiful  ceremony?" 

"Eleven  o'clock  in  the  morning,"  replied  the  priest, 


608  WOOD  AND  STONE 

ignoring  with  a  dignified  wave  of  his  hand  the  stone- 
carver's  jeering  taunt. 

"Well  then  —  if  that  suits  you  —  and  does  not 
interfere  with  the  Lord  Bishop  — "  said  Luke,  "I 
should  be  most  grateful  if  you  could  make  the  hour 
for  James'  funeral,  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning?  That 
service  I  happen  to  be  more  familiar  with  than  the 
others,  —  and  I  know  it  doesn't  take  very  long." 

Mr.  Clavering  bent  his  head  in  assent. 

"It  shall  certainly  be  as  you  wish,"  he  said.  "If 
unforeseen  diflSculties  arise,  I  will  let  you  know.  But 
I  have  no  doubt  it  can  be  managed. 

"I  am  right  in  assuming,"  he  added,  a  little  un- 
easily, "that  your  brother  was  a  baptized  member  of 
our  church.'*" 

Luke  lifted  the  child  from  the  bough  and  made  her 
run  off  to  play  with  the  others.  The  glance  he  then 
turned  upon  the  vicar  of  Nevilton  was  not  one  of 
admiration. 

"James  was  the  noblest  spirit  I've  ever  known," 
he  said  sternly.  "If  there  is  such  a  thing  as  another 
world,  he  is  certain  to  reach  it  —  church  or  no 
church.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  if  it  is  at  all  important 
to  you,  he  was  baptized  in  Nevilton.  You'll  find  his 
name  in  the  register  —  and  mine  too!"  he  added  with 
a  laugh. 

Mr.  Clavering  kept  silence,  and  moved  towards  the 
gate.  Luke  followed  him,  and  at  the  gate  they  shook 
hands.  Perhaps  the  same  thought  passed  through 
the  minds  of  both  of  them,  as  they  went  through  this 
ceremony;  for  a  very  queer  look,  almost  identical  in 
its  expression  on  either  face,  was  exchanged  between 
them. 


AVE   ATQUE   VALE 609 

Before  the  morning  was  over  Luke  had  a  second 
visit  of  condolence.  This  was  from  Mr.  Quincunx, 
and  never  had  the  quaint  recluse  been  more  warmly 
received.  Luke  was  conscious  at  once  that  here  was 
a  man  who  could  enter  into  every  one  of  his  feelings, 
and  be  neither  horrified  nor  scandalized  by  the  most 
fantastic  inconsistency. 

The  two  friends  walked  up  and  down  the  sunny 
field  in  front  of  the  house,  Luke  pouring  into  the 
solitary's  attentive  ears  every  one  of  his  recent  im- 
pressions and  sensations. 

Mr.  Quincunx  was  evidently  profoundly  moved  by 
James'  death.  He  refused  Luke's  offer  to  let  him 
visit  the  room  upstairs,  but  his  refusal  was  expressed 
in  such  a  natural  and  characteristic  manner  that  the 
!  stone-carver  accepted  it  in  perfect  good  part. 
I  After  a  while  they  sat  down  together  under  the 
shady  hedge  at  the  top  of  the  meadow.  Here  they 
discoursed  and  philosophized  at  large,  listening  to  the 
sound  of  the  church-bells  and  watching  the  slow- 
moving  cattle.  It  was  one  of  those  unrufHed  Sunday 
mornings,  when,  in  such  places  as  this,  the  drowsiness 
of  the  sun-warmed  leaves  and  grasses  seems  endowed 
with  a  kind  of  consecrated  calm,  the  movements  of 
the  horses  and  oxen  grow  solemn  and  ritualistic,  the 
languor  of  the  heavy-winged  butterflies  appears  holy, 
and  the  stiff  sabbatical  dresses  of  the  men  and  women 
who  shuffle  so  demurely  to  and  fro,  seem  part  of  a 
jpatient  liturgical  observance. 

!  Luke  loved  Mr.  Quincunx  that  morning.  The 
I  recluse  was  indeed  precisely  in  his  element.  Living 
i  habitually  himself  in  thoughts  of  death,  pleased  — 
in  that  incomparable  sunshine  —  to  find  himself  still 


I 


610  WOOD   AND   STONE 

alive,  cynical  and  yet  considerate,  mystical  and  yet 
humorous,  he  exactly  supplied  what  the  wounded 
heart  of  the  pagan  mourner  required  for  its  comfort. 
"Idiots!  asses!  fools!"  the  stone-carver  ejaculated, 
apostrophizing  in  his  inmost  spirit  the  various  persons, 
clever  or  otherwise,  to  whom  this  nervous  and  eccen- 
tric creature  was  a  mere  type  of  failure  and  super- 
annuation.    None  of  these  others,  —  not  one  of  them, 

—  not  Romer  nor  Dangelis  nor  Clavering  nor  Taxater 

—  could  for  a  moment  have  entered  into  the  peculiar 
feelings  which  oppressed  him.  As  for  Gladys  or 
Phyllis  or  Annie  or  Polly,  —  he  would  have  as  soon 
thought  of  relating  his  emotions  to  a  row  of  swallows  j 
upon  a  telegraph-wire  as  to  any  of  those  dainty 
epitomes  of  life's  evasiveness! 

A  man's  brain,  a  man's  imagination,  a  man's 
scepticism,  was  what  he  wanted;  but  he  wanted  it 
touched  with  just  that  flavour  of  fanciful  sentiment  of 
which  the  Nevilton  hermit  was  a  master.  A  hundred 
quaint  little  episodes,  the  import  of  which  none  but 
Mr.  Quincunx  could  have  appreciated,  were  evoked  I 
by  the  stone-carver.  Nothing  was  too  blasphemous, 
nothing  too  outrageous,  nothing  too  bizarre,  for  the 
solitary's  taste.  On  the  other  hand,  he  entered  with 
tender  and  perfect  clairvoyance  into  the  sick  misery 
of  loss  which  remained  the  background  of  all  Luke's 
sensations. 

The  younger  man's  impetuous  confidences  ebbed 
and  dwindled  at  last;  and  with  the  silence  of  the 
church-bells  and  the  receding  to  the  opposite  corner 
of  the  field  of  the  browsing  cattle,  a  deep  and  melan- 
choly hush  settled  upon  them  both. 

Then  it  was  that  Mr.  Quincunx  began  speaking  of 


AVE  ATQUE   VALE  611 

himself  and  his  own  anxieties.  In  the  tension  of  the 
moment  he  even  went  so  far  as  to  disclose  to  Luke, 
under  a  promise  of  absolute  secrecy,  the  sinister  story 
of  that  contract  into  which  Lacrima  had  entered  with 
their  employer. 

Luke  was  all  attention  at  once.  This  was  indeed  a 
piece  of  astounding  news!  He  couldn't  have  said 
whether  he  wondered  more  at  the  quixotic  devotion 
of  Lacrima  for  this  quaint  person,  or  at  the  solitary's 
unprecedented  candour  in  putting  him  "en  rapport" 
with  such  an  amazing  situation. 

"Of  course  we  know,"  murmured  Mr.  Quincunx, 
in  his  deep  subterranean  voice,  "that  she  wouldn't 
have  promised  such  a  thing,  unless  in  her  heart  she 
had  been  keen,  at  all  costs,  to  escape  from  those 
people.  It  isn't  human  nature  to  give  up  everything 
for  nothing.  Probably,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  she 
rather  likes  the  idea  of  having  a  house  of  her  own. 
I  expect  she  thinks  she  could  twist  that  fool  Goring 
round  her  finger;  and  I  daresay  she  could!  But  the 
thing  is,  what  do  you  advise  me  to  do.^*  Of  course  I'm 
glad  enough  to  agree  to  anything  that  saves  me  from 
this  damnable  ofiice.  But  what  worries  me  about  it 
is  that  devil  Romer  put  it  into  her  head.  I  don't 
trust  him,  Luke;    I  don't  trust  him!" 

"I  should  think  you  don't!"  exclaimed  his  com- 
panion, looking  with  astonishment  and  wonder  into 
the  solemn  grey  eyes  fixed  sorrowfully  and  intently 
upon  his  own.  What  a  strange  thing,  he  thought  to 
himself,  that  this  subtle-minded  intelligence  should  be 
so  hopelessly  devoid  of  the  least  push  of  practical 
impetus. 

"Of    course,"    Mr.    Quincunx    continued,    "neither 


612  WOOD  AND   STONE 

you  nor  I  would  fuss  ourselves  much  over  the  idea  of  a 
girl  being  married  to  a  fool  like  this,  if  there  weren't 
something  different  from  the  rest  about  her.  This 
nonsense  about  their  having  to  'love,'  as  the  little 
simpletons  call  it,  the  man  they  agree  to  live  with,  is 
of  course  all  tommy-rot.  No  one  'loves'  the  person 
they  live  with.  She  wouldn't  love  me,  —  she'd 
probably  hate  me  like  poison,  —  after  the  first  week 
or  so!  The  romantic  idiots  who  make  so  much  of 
'love,'  and  are  so  horrified  when  these  little  creatures 
are  married  without  it,  don't  understand  what  this 
planet  is  made  of.  They  don't  understand  the  feel- 
ings of  the  girls  either. 

"  I  tell  you  a  girl  likes  being  made  a  victim  of  in  this 
particular  kind  of  way.  They're  much  less  fastidious, 
when  it  comes  to  the  point,  than  we  are.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  what  does  trouble  them  is  being  married  to  a 
man  they  really  have  a  passion  for.  Then,  jealousy 
bites  through  their  soft  flesh  like  Cleopatra's  serpent, 
and  all  sorts  of  wild  ideas  get  into  their  heads.  It's 
not  natural,  Luke,  it's  not  natural,  for  girls  to  marry 
a  person  they  love!  That's  why  we  country  dogs 
treat  the  whole  thing  as  a  lewd  jest. 

"Do  you  think  these  honest  couples  who  stand 
giggling  and  smirking  before  our  dear  clergyman  every 
quarter,  don't  hate  one  another  in  their  hearts.''  Of 
course  they  do;  it  wouldn't  be  nature  if  they  didn't! 
But  that  doesn't  say  they  don't  get  their  pleasure 
out  of  it.  And  Lacrima'll  get  her  pleasure,  in  some 
mad  roundabout  fashion,  from  marrying  Goring,  — 
you  may  take  my  word  for  that!" 

"It  seems  to  me,"  remarked  Luke  slowly,  "that 
you're  trying  all  this  time  to  quiet  your  conscience. 


AVE  ATQUE  VALE  613 

I  believe  you've  really  got  far  more  conscience, 
Maurice,  than  I  have.  It's  your  conscience  that 
makes  you  speak  so  loud,  at  this  very  moment!" 

Mr.  Quincunx  got  up  on  his  feet  and  stroked  his 
beard.  "I'm  afraid  I've  annoyed  you  somehow,"  he 
remarked.  "No  person  ever  speaks  of  another  per- 
son's conscience  unless  he's  in  a  rage  with  him." 

The  stone-carver  stretched  out  his  legs  and  lit  a 
cigarette.  "Sit  down  again,  you  old  fool,"  he  said, 
"and  let's  talk  this  business  over  sensibly." 

The  recluse  sighed  deeply,  and,  subsiding  into  his 
former  position,  fixed  a  look  of  hopeless  melancholy 
upon  the  sunlit  landscape. 

"The  point  is  this,  Maurice,"  began  the  young 
man.  "The  first  thing  in  these  complicated  situations 
is  to  be  absolutely  certain  what  one  wants  oneself. 
It  seems  to  me  that  a  good  deal  of  your  agitation 
comes  from  the  fact  that  you  haven't  made  up  your 
mind  what  you  want.  You  asked  my  advice,  you 
know,  so  you  won't  be  angry  if  I'm  quite  plain  with 
you?" 

"Go  on,"  said  Mr.  Quincunx,  a  remote  flicker  of 
his  goblin-smile  twitching  his  nostrils,  "I  see  I'm  in 
for  a  few  little  hits." 

Luke  waved  his  hand.  "No  hits,  my  friend,  no 
hits.  All  I  want  to  do,  is  to  find  out  from  you  what 
you  really  feel.  One  philosophizes,  naturally,  about 
girls  marrying,  and  so  on;  but  the  point  is,  —  do  you 
want  this  particular  young  lady  for  yourself,  or  don't 
you.?" 

Mr.  Quincunx  stroked  his  beard.  "Well,"  —  he 
said  meditatively,  "if  it  comes  to  that,  I  suppose  I  do 
want  her.     We're  all  fools  in  some  way  or  other,  I 


6U  WOOD  AND   STONE 

fancy.  Yes,  I  do  want  her,  Luke,  and  that's  the 
honest  truth.  But  I  don't  want  to  have  to  work 
twice  as  hard  as  I'm  doing  now,  and  under  still  more 
unpleasant  conditions,  to  keep  her!" 

Luke  emitted  a  puff  of  smoke  and  knocked  the 
ashes  from  his  cigarette  upon  the  purple  head  of  a 
tall  knapweed. 

"Ah!"  he  ejaculated.  "Now  we've  got  something 
to  go  upon." 

Mr.  Quincunx  surveyed  the  faun-like  profile  of 
his  friend  with  some  apprehension.  He  mentally 
resolved  that  nothing,  —  nothing  in  heaven  nor 
earth,  —  should  put  him  to  the  agitation  of  making 
any  drastic  change  in  his  life. 

"We  get  back  then,"  continued  Luke,  "to  the 
point  we  reached  on  our  walk  to  Seven  Ashes." 

As  he  said  the  words  "Seven  Ashes"  the  ice-cold 
finger  of  memory  pierced  him  with  that  sudden  stab 
which  is  like  a  physical  blow.  What  did  it  matter, 
after  all,  he  thought,  what  happened  to  any  of  these 
people,  now  Daddy  James  was  dead? 

"You  remember,"  he  went  on,  while  the  sorrowful 
grey  eyes  of  his  companion  regarded  him  with  wistful 
anxiety,  "you  told  me,  in  that  walk,  that  if  some 
imaginary  person  were  to  leave  you  money  enough 
to  live  comfortably,  you  would  marry  Lacrima  with- 
out any  hesitation.''" 

Mr.  Quincunx  nodded. 

"Well,"  —  Luke  continued  —  "in  return  for  your 
confession  about  that  contract,  I'll  confess  to  you 
that  Mr.  Taxater  and  I  formed  a  plan  together,  when 
my  brother  first  got  ill,  to  secure  you  this  money." 

Mr.  Quincunx  made  a  grimace  of  astonishment. 


AVE  ATQUE  VALE  615 

"The  plan  has  lapsed  now,"  went  on  Luke,  "owing 
to  Mr.  Taxater's  being  away;  but  I  can't  help  feeling 
that  something  of  that  kind  might  be  done.  I  feel 
in  a  queer  sort  of  fashion,"  he  added,  "though  I  can't 
quite  tell  you  why,  that,  after  all,  things'll  so  work 
themselves  out,  that  you  will  get  both  the  girl  and 
the  money!" 

Mr.  Quincunx  burst  into  a  fit  of  hilarious  merri- 
ment, and  rubbed  his  hands  together.  But  a  moment 
later  his  face  clouded. 

"It's  impossible,"  he  murmured  with  a  deep  sigh; 
"it's  impossible,  Luke.  Girls  and  gold  go  together 
like  butterflies  and  sunshine.  I'm  as  far  from  either, 
as  the  sea-weed  under  the  arch  of  Weymouth  Bridge." 

Luke  pondered  for  a  moment  in  silence. 

"It's  an  absurd  superstition,"  he  finally  remarked, 
"but  I  can't  help  a  sort  of  feeling  that  James'  spirit 
is  actively  exerting  itself  on  your  side.  He  was 
a  romantic  old  truepenny,  and  his  last  thoughts  were 
all  fixed  —  of  that  I'm  sure  —  upon  Lacrima's 
escaping  this  marriage  with  Goring." 

Mr.  Quincunx  sighed.  He  had  vaguely  imagined 
the  possibility  of  some  grand  diplomatic  stroke  on  his 
behalf,  from  the  astute  Luke;  and  this  relapse  into 
mysticism,  on  the  part  of  that  sworn  materialist,  did 
not  strike  him  as  reassuring. 

The  silence  that  fell  between  them  was  broken  by 
the  sudden  appearance  of  a  figure  familiar  to  them 
both,  crossing  the  field  towards  them.  It  was  Witch- 
Bessie,  who,  in  a  bright  new  shawl,  and  with  a  mys- 
terious packet  clutched  in  her  hand,  was  beckoning  to 
attract  their  attention.  The  men  rose  and  advanced 
to  meet  her. 


610  WOOD   AND   STONE 

"I'll  sit  down  a  bit  with  'ee,"  cried  the  old  woman, 
waving  to  them  to  return  to  their  former  posi- 
tion. 

When  they  were  seated  once  more  beneath  the 
bank,  —  the  old  lady,  like  some  strange  Peruvian 
idol,  resting  cross-legged  at  their  feet,  —  she  began, 
without  further  delay,  to  explain  the  cause  of  her 
visit. 

"I  know'd  how  'twould  be  with  'ee,"  she  said, 
addressing  Luke,  but  turning  a  not  unfriendly  eye 
upon  his  companion.  *'I  did  know  well  how  'twould 
be.  I  hear'd  tell  of  brother's  being  laid  out,  from 
Bert  Leerd,  as  I  traipsed  through  Wild  Pine  this 
morning. 

"Ninsy  Lintot  was  a-cryin'  enough  to  break  her 
poor  heart.  I  hear'd  'un  as  I  doddered  down  yon 
lane.  She  were  all  lonesome-like,  under  them  girt 
trees,  shakin'  and  sobbin'  terrible.  She  took  on  so, 
when  I  arst  what  ailed  'un,  that  I  dursn't  lay  finger 
on  the  lass.  | 

"She  did  right  down  scare  I,  Master  Luke,  and 
that's  God's  holy  truth!  'Let  me  bide,  Bessie,'  says 
she,  'let  me  bide.'  I  telled  her  'twas  a  sin  to  He 
she  loved  best,  to  carry  on  so  hopeless;  and  with  that 
she  up  and  says,  —  'I  be  the  cause  of  it  all,  Bessie,' 
says  she,  'I  be  the  cause  he  throw'd  'isself  away.' 
And  with  that  she  set  herself  cryin'  again,  like  as 
'twas  pitiful  to  hear.  'My  darlin',  my  darlin','  she 
kept  callin'  out.  'I  love  no  soul  'cept  thee  —  no 
soul  'cept  thee!' 

"  'Twas  then  I  recollected  wot  my  old  Mother  used 
to  say,  'bout  maids  who  be  cryin'  like  pantin'  hares. 
'Listen  to  me,  Ninsy  Lintot,'  I  says,  solemn  and  slow, 


AVE  ATQUE  VALE  617 

like  as  us  were  in  church.  'One  above's  been  talk- 
ing wi'  I,  this  blessed  morn,  and  He  do  say  as  Master 
James  be  in  Abram's  Bosom,  with  them  shining  ones, 
and  it  be  shame  and  sin  for  mortals  like  we  to  wish 
'un  back,' 

"That  quieted  the  lass  a  bit,  and  I  did  tell  she 
then,  wot  be  God's  truth,  that  'tweren't  her  at  all 
turned  brother's  head,  but  the  pleasure  of  the 
Almighty.  "Tis  for  folks  like  us,'  I  says  to  her,  'to 
take  wot  His  will  do  send,  and  bide  quiet  and  still, 
same  as  cows,  drove  to  barton.' 

"  'Twere  a  blessing  of  providence  I'd  met  crazy 
Bert  afore  I  seed  the  lass,  else  I'd  a  been  struck  dazed- 
like  by  wot  she  did  tell.  But  as  'twas,  thanks  be 
to  recollectin'  mother's  trick  wi'  such  wendy  maids, 
I  dried  her  poor  eyes  and  got  her  back  home  along. 
And  she  gave  I  summat  to  put  in  brother's  coffin 
afore  they  do  nail  'un  down." 

Before  either  Luke  or  Mr.  Quincunx  had  time  to 
utter  any  comment  upon  this  narration,  Witch-Bessie 
unfastened  the  packet  she  was  carrying,  and  pro- 
duced from  a  cardboard  box  a  large  roughly-moulded 
bracelet,  or  bangle,  of  heavy  silver,  such  as  may  be 
bought  in  the  bazaars  of  Tunis  or  Algiers. 

"There,"  cried  the  old  woman,  holding  the  thing 
up,  and  flashing  it  in  the  sun,  "that's  wot  she  gave 
I,  to  bury  long  wi'  brother!  Be  pretty  enough, 
baint  'un?  Though,  may-be,  not  fittin'  for  a  quiet 
home-keeping  lass  like  she.  She  had  'un  off  some 
Gipoo,  she  said;  and  to  my  thinkin'  it  be  a  kind  of 
heathen  ornimint,  same  as  folks  do  buy  at  Rogertown 
Fair.  But  such  as  'tis,  that  be  wot  'tis  bestowed 
for,    to   put   i'    the   earth    long    wi'    brother.      Seems 


618  WOOD  AND   STONE 

somethin'  of  a  pity,  may-be,  but  maid's  whimsies  be 
maids'  whimsies,  and  God  Ahnighty'll  plague  the 
hard-hearted  folk  as  won't  perform  wot  they  do  cry 
out  for." 

Luke  took  the  bangle  from  the  old  woman's 
hand. 

"Of  course  I'll  do  what  she  wants,  Bessie,"  he  said. 
"Poor  little  Ninsy,  I  never  knew  how  much  she 
cared." 

He  permitted  Mr.  Quincunx  to  handle  the  sil- 
ver object,  and  then  carefully  placed  it  in  his 
pocket. 

"Hullo!"  he  cried,  "what  else  have  you  got, 
Bessie?"  This  exclamation  was  caused  by  the  fact 
that  Witch-Bessie,  after  fumbling  in  her  shawl  had 
produced  a  second  mysterious  packet,  smaller  than 
the  first  and  tightly  tied  round  with  the  stalks  of  some 
sort  of  hedge-weed. 

"Cards,  by  Heaven!"  exclaimed  Luke.  "Oh  Bessie, 
Bessie,"  he  added,  "why  didn't  you  bring  these 
round  here  twenty-four  hours  ago?  You  might  have 
made  me  take  him  with  me  to  Weymouth!" 

Untying  the  packet,  which  contained  as  the  stone- 
carver  had  anticipated,  a  pack  of  incredibly  dirty 
cards,  the  old  woman  without  a  word  to  either  of 
them,  shuffled  and  sifted  them,  according  to  some 
secret  rule,  and  laid  aside  all  but  nine.  These,  al- 
most, but  not  entirely,  consisting  of  court  cards, 
she  spread  out  in  a  carefully  concerted  manner  on 
the  grass  at  her  feet. 

Muttering  over  them  some  extraordinary  gibberish, 
out  of  which  the  two  men  could  only  catch  the 
following  words, 


AVE  ATQUE  VALE  619 

"Higgory,  diggory.  digg'd 
My  sow  has  pigg'd. 
There's  a  good  card  for  thee. 
There's  a  still  better  than  he! 
There  is  the  best  of  all  three. 
And  there  is  Niddy-noddee! " — 

Witch-Bessie  picked  up  these  nine  cards,  and  shuflBed 
thera  long  and  fast. 

She  then  handed  them  to  Luke,  face-downward,  and 
bade  him  draw  seven  out  of  the  nine.  These  she  once 
more  arranged,  according  to  some  occult  plan,  upon 
the  grass,  and  pondered  over  them  with  wrinkled  brow. 

"  'Tis  as  'twould  be!"  she  muttered  at  last.  "Cards 
be  wonderful  crafty,  though  toads  and  efties,  to  my 
thinkin',  be  better,  and  a  viper's  'innards  be  God's 
very  truth." 

Making,  to  Luke's  great  disappointment,  no  further 
allusion  to  the  result  of  her  investigations,  the  old 
woman  picked  up  the  cards  and  went  through  the 
whole  process  again,  in  honour  of  Mr.  Quincunx. 

This  time,  after  bending  for  several  minutes  over 
the  solitary's   choice,  she   became  more  voluble. 

"Thy  heart's  wish  be  thine,  dearie,"  she  said. 
"But  there  be  thwartings  and  blastings.  Three 
tears  —  three  kisses  —  and  a  terrible  journey.  Us 
shan't  have  'ee  long  wi'  we,  in  these  'ere  parts.  Thee 
be  marked  and  signed,  master,  by  fallin'  stars  and 
flyin'  birds.  There's  good  sound  wood  gone  to  ship's 
keel  wot'll  carry  thee  fast  and  far.  Blastings  and 
thwartings!     But  thy  heart's  wish  be  thine,  dearie." 

The  humourous  nostrils  of  Mr.  Quincunx  and  the 
expressive  curves  of  his  bearded  chin  had  twitched 
and    quivered    as    this    sorcery    began,    but    the    old 


620  WOOD  AND   STONE 

woman's  reference  to  a  "terrible  journey"  clouded 
his  countenance  with  blank  dismay. 

Luke  pressed  the  sybil  to  be  equally  communicative 
with  regard  to  his  own  fate,  but  the  old  woman  gath- 
ered up  her  cards,  twisted  the  same  faded  stalks 
round  the  packet,  and  returned  it  to  the  folds  of 
her  shawl.     Then  she  struggled  up  upon  her  feet. 

"Don't  leave  us  yet,  Bessie,"  said  Luke.  "I'll 
bring  you  out  something  to  eat  presently." 

Witch-Bessie's  only  reply  to  this  hospitable  invi- 
tation was  confounding  in  its  irrelevance.  She 
picked  up  her  draggled  skirt  with  her  two  hands,  dis- 
playing her  unlaced  boots  and  rumpled  stockings, 
and  then,  throwing  back  her  wizened  head,  with  its 
rusty  weather-bleached  bonnet,  and  emitting  a  pallid 
laugh  from  her  toothless  gums,  she  proceeded  to 
tread  a  sort  of  jerky  measure,  moving  her  old  feet 
to  the  tune  of  a  shrill  ditty. 

"Now  we  dance  looby,  looby,  looby. 
Now  we  dance  looby,  looby,  light; 
Shake  your  right  hand  a  little. 
Shake  your  left  hand  a  little. 
And  turn  you  round  about." 

"Ye'll  both  see  I  again,  present,"  she  panted,  when 
this  performance  was  over,  "but  bide  where  'ee  be, 
bide  where  'ee  be  now.  Old  Bessie's  said  her  say, 
and  she  be  due  long  of  HuUaway  Cross,  come  noon." 

As  she  hobbled  off  to  the  neighbouring  stile,  Luke 
saw  her  kiss  the  tips  of  her  fingers  in  the  direction 
of  the  station-master's  house. 

"She's  bidding  Daddy  James  good-bye,"  he 
thought.  "What  a  world!  'Looby,  looby,  looby!' 
A  proper  Dance  of  Death  for  a  son  of  my  mother!" 


CHAPTER   XXIV 
THE  GRANARY 

LUKE  persuaded  Mr.  Quincunx  to  stay  with 
him  for  the  station-master's  Sunday  dinner, 
and  to  stroll  with  him  down  to  the  churchyard 
in  the  afternoon  to  decide,  in  consultation  with  the 
sexton,  upon  the  most  suitable  spot  for  his  brother's 
interment.  The  stone-carver  was  resolved  that  this 
spot  should  be  removed  as  far  as  possible  from  the 
grave  of  their  parents,  and  the  impiety  of  this  reso- 
lution was  justified  by  the  fact  that  Gideon's  tomb 
was  crowded  on  both  sides  by  less  aggressive  sleepers. 

They  finally  selected  a  remote  place  under  the 
southern  wall,  at  the  point  where  the  long  shadow 
of  the  tower,  in  the  late  afternoon,  flung  its  clear- 
outlined  battlements  on  the  waving  grass. 

Luke  continued  to  be  entirely  pleased  with  Mr. 
Quincunx's  tact  and  sympathy.  He  felt  he  could 
not  have  secured  a  better  companion  for  this  task 
of  selecting  the  final  resting-place  of  the  brother  of 
his  soul.  "Curse  these  fools,"  he  thought,  "who  rail 
against  this  excellent  man!"  What  mattered  it, 
after  all,  that  the  fellow  hated  what  the  world  calls 
"work,"  and  loved  a  peaceful  life  removed  from 
distraction? 

The  noble  attributes  of  humour,  of  imagination, 
of  intelligence,  —  how  much  more  important  they  were, 
and  conducive  to  the  general  human  happiness,  than 


622  WOOD  AND   STONE 

the  mere  power  of  making  money!  Compared  with 
the  delicious  twists  and  diverting  convolutions  in 
Mr.  Quincunx's  extraordinary  brain,  how  dull,  how 
insipid,  seemed  such  worldly  cleverness! 

The  death  of  his  brother  had  had  the  effect  of 
throwing  these  things  into  a  new  perspective.  The 
Machiavellian  astuteness,  which,  in  himself,  in  Romer, 
in  Mr.  Taxater,  and  in  many  others,  he  had,  until 
now,  regarded  as  of  supreme  value  in  the  conduct 
of  life,  seemed  to  him,  as  he  regretfully  bade  the 
recluse  farewell  and  retraced  his  steps,  far  less  es- 
sential, far  less  important,  than  this  imaginative  sensi- 
tiveness to  the  astounding  spectacle  of  the  world. 

He  fancied  he  discerned  in  front  of  him,  as  he 
left  the  churchyard,  the  well-known  figure  of  his  newly 
affianced  Annie,  and  he  made  a  detour  through  the 
lane,  to  avoid  her.  He  felt  at  that  moment  as 
though  nothing  in  the  universe  were  interesting  or 
important  except  the  sympathetic  conversation  of  the 
friends  of  one's  natural  choice  —  persons  of  that 
small,  that  fatally  small  circle,  from  which  just  now 
the  centre  seemed  to  have  dropped  out! 

Girls  were  a  distraction,  a  pastime,  a  lure,  an 
intoxication;  but  a  shock  like  this,  casting  one  back 
upon  life's  essential  verities,  threw  even  lust  itself 
into  the  limbo  of  irrelevant  things.  All  his  recent 
preoccupation  with  the  love  of  women  seemed  to 
him  noiy,  as  though,  in  place  of  dreaming  over  the 
mystery  of  the  great  tide  of  life,  hand  in  hand  with 
initiated  comrades,  he  were  called  upon  to  go  launch- 
ing little  paper-boats  on  its  surface,  full  of  fretful 
anxiety  as  to  whether  they  sank  or  floated. 

Weighed  down  by  the  hopeless  misery  of  his  loss, 


THE   GRANARY  623 

he  made  his  way  slowly  back  to  the  station-master's 
house,  too  absorbed  in  his  grief  to  speak  to  any- 
one. 

After  tea  he  became  so  wretched  and  lonely,  that 
he  decided  to  walk  over  to  HuUaway  on  the  chance 
of  getting  another  glimpse  of  Witch-Bessie.  Even 
the  sympathy  of  the  station-master's  wife  got  on  his 
nerves  and  the  romping  of  the  children  fretted  and 
chafed  him. 

He  walked  fast,  swinging  his  stick  and  keeping  his 
eyes  on  the  ground,  his  heart  empty  and  desolate. 
He  followed  the  very  path  by  which  Gladys  and  he, 
some  few  short  weeks  before,  had  returned  in  the 
track  of  their  two  friends,  from  the  Hullaway  stocks. 

Arriving  at  the  village  green,  with  its  pond,  its 
elms,  its  raised  pavement,  and  its  groups  of  Sunday 
loiterers,  he  turned  into  the  churchyard.  As  we  have 
noted  many  times  ere  now,  the  appealing  silence  of 
these  places  of  the  dead  had  an  invincible  charm  for 
him.  It  was  perhaps  a  morbid  tendency  inherited 
from  his  mother,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  it  may  have 
been  a  pure  aesthetic  whim  of  his  own,  that  led  him, 
with  so  magnetic  an  attraction,  towards  these  oases 
of  mute  patience,  in  the  midst  of  the  diurnal  activi- 
ties; but  whatever  the  spell  was,  Luke  had  never 
found  more  relief  in  obeying  it  than  he  did  at  this 
present  hour. 

He  sat  down  in  their  favourite  corner  and  looked 
with  interest  at  the  various  newly-blown  wild-flowers, 
which  a  few  weeks'  lapse  had  brought  to  light.  How 
well  he  loved  the  pungent  stringy  stalks,  the  grey 
leaves,  the  flat  sturdy  flowers  of  the  "achillea"  or 
"  yarrow  " !    Perhaps,  above  all  the  late  summer  blooms, 


624  WOOD  AND   STONE 

he  preferred  these  —  finding,  in  their  very  coarseness 
of  texture  and  toughness  of  stem,  something  that 
reassured  and  fortified.  They  were  so  bitter  in  their 
herbal  fragrance,  so  astringent  in  the  tang  of  their 
pungent  taste,  that  they  suggested  to  him  the  kind 
of  tonic  cynicism,  the  sort  of  humorous  courage  and 
gay  disdain,  with  which  it  was  his  constant  hope  to 
come  at  last  to  accept  life. 

It  pleased  him,  above  all  when  he  found  these 
plants  tinged  with  a  delicious  pink,  as  though  the 
juice  of  raspberries  had  been  squeezed  over  them, 
and  it  was  precisely  this  tint  he  noticed  now  in  a 
large  clump  of  them,  growing  on  the  sun-warmed 
grave  of  a  certain  Hugh  and  Constance  Foley, 
former  occupants  of  the  old  Manor  House  behind 
him. 

He  wondered  if  this  long-buried  Hugh  —  a  mysteri- 
ous and  shadowy  figure,  about  whom  James  and  he 
had  often  woven  fantastic  histories  —  had  felt  as 
forlorn  as  he  felt  now,  when  he  lost  his  Constance. 
Could  a  Constance,  or  an  Annie,  or  a  Phyllis,  ever 
leave  quite  the  void  behind  them  such  as  now  ached 
and  throbbed  within  him?  Yes,  he  supposed  so. 
Men  planted  their  heart's  loves  in  many  various 
soils,  and  when  the  hand  of  fate  tugged  them  away, 
it  mattered  little  whether  it  was  chalk,  or  sand,  or 
loam,  that  clung  about  the  roots! 

He  looked  long  and  long  at  the  sunlit  mounds, 
over  which  the  tombstones  leaned  at  every  conceivable 
angle  and  upon  which  some  had  actually  fallen  pros- 
trate. These  neglected  monuments,  and  these  tall 
uncut  grasses  and  flowers,  had  always  seemed  to 
him  preferable  to  the  trim  neatness  of  an  enclosure 


THE   GRANARY 625 

like  that  of  Athelston,  which  resembled  the  lawn  of 
a  gentleman's  house. 

James  had  often  disputed  with  him  on  this  point, 
arguing,  in  a  spirit  of  surly  contradiction,  in  favour 
of  the  wondrous  effect  of  those  red  Athelston  roses 
hanging  over  clear-mown  turf.  The  diverse  sugges- 
tiveness  of  graveyards  was  one  of  the  brother's  best- 
loved  topics,  and  innumerable  cigarettes  had  they 
both  consumed,  weighing  this  subject,  on  this  very 
spot. 

Once  more  the  hideous  finality  of  the  thing  pierced 
the  heart  of  Luke  with  a  devastating  pang.  On  Wed- 
nesday next,  —  that  is,  after  the  lapse  of  two  brief 
days,  —  he  would  bid  farewell,  for  ever  and  ever  and 
ever,  to  the  human  companion  with  whom  he  had 
shared  all  he  cared  for  in  life! 

He  remembered  a  little  quarrel  he  once  had  with 
James,  long  ago,  in  this  very  place,  and  how  it  had 
been  the  elder  and  not  the  younger  who  had  made 
the  first  overtures  of  reconciliation,  and  how  James 
had  given  him  an  old  pair  of  silver  links,  —  he  was 
wearing  them  at  that  moment !  —  as  a  kind  of  peace- 
offering.  He  recollected  what  a  happy  evening  they 
had  spent  together  after  that  event,  and  how  they 
had  read  "Thus  spake  Zarathustra"  in  the  old  formi- 
dable English  translation  —  the  mere  largeness  of  the 
volume  answering  to  the  largeness  of  the  philosopher's 
thought. 

Never  again  would  they  two  "take  on  them,"  in 
the  sweet  Shakespearean  phrase,  "the  mystery  of 
things,  as  though  they  were  God's  spies." 

Luke  set  himself  to  recall,  one  by  one,  innumerable 
little  incidents  of  their  life  together.     He  remembered 


626  WOOD  AND   STONE 

various  occasions  in  which,  partly  out  of  pure  contrari- 
ness, but  partly  also  out  of  a  certain  instinctive  bias 
in  his  blood,  he  had  defended  their  father  against 
his  brother's  attacks.  He  recalled  one  strange  con- 
versation they  had  had,  under  the  withy-stumps  of 
Badger's  Bottom,  as  they  returned  through  the  dusk 
of  a  November  day,  from  a  long  walk  over  the 
southern  hills.  It  had  to  do  with  the  appearance  of 
a  cloud-swept  crescent  moon  above  the  Auber  woods. 

James  had  maintained  that  were  he  a  pagan  of 
the  extinct  polytheistic  faith,  he  would  have  wor- 
shipped the  moon,  and  willingly  offered  her,  night 
by  night,  —  he  used  the  pious  syllables  of  the  great 
hedonist,  —  her  glittering  wax  tapers  upon  the  sacred 
wheaten  cake.  Luke,  on  the  contrary,  had  sworn 
that  the  sun,  and  no  lesser  power,  was  the  god  of 
his  idolatry,  and  he  imagined  himself  in  place  of  his 
brother's  wax  candles,  pouring  forth,  morning  by 
morning,  a  rich  libation  of  gold  wine  to  that  bright 
lord  of  life. 

This  instinctive  division  of  taste  between  the  two, 
had  led,  over  and  over  again,  to  all  manner  of  friendly 
dissension. 

Luke  recalled  how  often  he  had  rallied  James  upon 
his  habit  of  drifting  into  what  the  younger  brother 
pertinently  described  as  a  "translunar  mood."  He 
was  "translunar"  enough  now,  at  any  rate;  but  now, 
it  was  in  honour  of  that  other  "lady  of  the  night,"' 
of  that  dreadful  "  double "  of  his  moon-goddess  — 
the  dark  pomegranate-bearer  —  that  the  candles  must 
be  lit! 

Luke  revived  in  his  mind,  as  he  watched  the  slow- 
shifting  shadows  move  from  grave  to  grave,  all  those 


TITK    GRANARY  627 

indescribable  "little  things"  of  their  every-day  life 
together,  the  loss  of  which  seemed  perhaps  worst 
of  all.  He  recalled  how  on  gusty  December  evenings 
they  would  plod  homeward  from  some  Saturday 
afternoon's  excursion  to  Yeoborough,  and  how  the 
cheerful  firelight  from  the  station-master's  house 
would  greet  them  as  they  crossed  the  railway. 

So  closely  had  their  thoughts  and  sensations  grown 
together,  that  there  were  many  little  poignant  mem- 
ories, out  of  the  woven  texture  of  which  he  found 
himself  quite  unable  to  disentangle  the  imaginative 
threads  that  were  due  to  his  brother,  from  such  as 
were  the  evocation  of  his  own  temperament. 

One  such  concentrated  moment,  of  exquisite  mem- 
ory, he  associated  with  an  old  farm-house  on  the 
edge  of  the  road  leading  from  Hullaway  to  Rogers- 
town.  This  road,  —  a  forlorn  enough  highway  of 
Roman  origin,  dividing  a  level  plain  of  desolate  rain- 
flooded  meadows,  —  was  one  of  their  favourite  haunts. 
"Halfway  House,"  as  the  farm-dwelling  was  called, 
especially  appealed  to  them,  because  of  its  romantic 
and  melancholy  isolation. 

Luke  remembered  how  he  had  paused  with  his 
brother  one  clear  frosty  afternoon  when  the  puddles 
by  the  road-side  were  criss-crossed  by  little  broken 
stars  of  fresh-formed  ice,  and  had  imagined  how  they 
tv'ould  feel  if  such  a  place  belonged  to  them  by  heredi- 
tary birthright,  what  they  would  feel  were  they  even 
now  returning  there,  between  the  tall  evergreens 
it  the  gate,  to  spend  a  long  evening  over  a  log  fire, 
with,  mulled  claret  on  the  hob,  and  cards  and  books 
an  the  table,  and  a  great  white  Persian  cat,  —  this 
was  James'  interpolation!  —  purring  softly,  and  rub- 


628  WOOD  AND  STONE 

bing    its    silky    sides    against    Chinese    vases    full    of 
rose-leaves. 

Strange  journeys  his  mind  took,  that  long  unfor- 
gettable afternoon,  —  the  first  of  his  life  spent  with- 
out his  brother!  He  saw  before  him,  at  one  moment, 
a  little  desolate  wooden  pier,  broken  by  waves  and 
weather,  somewhere  on  the  Weymouth  coast.  The  in- 
describable pathos  of  things  outworn  and  done  with, 
of  things  abandoned  by  man  and  ill-used  by  nature, 
had  given  to  this  derelict  pile  of  drift-wood  a  curious 
prominence  in  his  House  of  Memory.  He  remembered 
the  look  with  which  James  had  regarded  it,  and  how 
the  wind  had  whistled  through  it  and  how  they  had 
tried  in  vain  to  light  their  cigarettes  under  its 
shelter. 

At  another  moment  his  mind  swung  back  to  the 
daily  routine  in  their  pleasant  lodging.  He  recalled 
certain  spring  mornings  when  they  had  risen  together 
at  dawn  and  had  crept  stealthily  out,  for  fear  of  waking 
their  landlady.  He  vividly  remembered  the  peculiar 
smell  of  moss  and  primroses  with  which  the  air  seemed 
full  on  one  of  these  occasions. 

The  place  Luke  had  chosen  for  summoning  up  all 
these  ghosts  of  the  past  held  him  with  such  a  spell 
that  he  permitted  the  church-bells  to  ring  and  the 
little  congregation  to  assemble  for  the  evening 
service  without  moving  or  stirring.  "Hugh  and 
Constance  Foley  "  he  kept  repeating  to  himself,  as  the 
priest's  voice,  within  the  sacred  building,  intoned  the 
prayers.  The  sentiment  of  the  plaintive  hymn  with 
which  the  service  closed,  —  he  hardly  moved  or  stirred  i 
for  the  brief  hour  of  the  liturgy's  progress,  —  brought , 
tears,  the  first  he  had  shed  since  his  brother's  death, 


THE   GRANARY  629 

to  this  wanton  faun's  eyes.  What  is  there,  he  thought, 
in  these  wistful  tunes,  and  impossible,  too-sweet 
words,  that  must  needs  hit  the  most  cynical  of 
sceptics? 

He  let  the  people  shuffle  out  and  drift  away,  and 
the  grey-haired  parson  and  his  silk-gowned  wife  fol- 
low them  and  vanish,  and  still  he  did  not  stir.  For 
some  half-an-hour  longer  he  remained  in  the  same 
position,  his  chin  upon  his  knees,  staring  gloomily 
in  front  of  him.  He  was  still  seated  so,  when,  to 
the  eyes  of  an  observer  posted  on  the  top  of  the 
tower,  two  persons,  the  first  a  woman  and  the  sec- 
ond a  man,  would  have  been  observed  approaching, 
by  a  rarely-traversed  field-path,  the  side  of  the  en- 
closure most  remote  from  Hullaway  Green. 

The  path  upon  which  these  figures  advanced  was 
interrupted  at  certain  intervals  by  tall  elm-trees,  and 
it  would  have  been  clear  to  our  imaginary  watcher 
upon  the  tower  that  the  second  of  the  two  was  glad 
enough  of  the  shelter  of  these  trees,  of  which  it  was 
evident  he  intended  to  make  use,  did  the  first  figure 
turn  and  glance  backward. 

Had  such  a  sentinel  been  possessed  of  local  knowl- 
edge he  would  have  had  no  difficulty  in  recognizing 
the  first  of  these  persons  as  Gladys  Romer  and  the 
second  as  Mr.  Clavering. 

Gladys  had,  in  fact,  gone  alone  to  the  evening 
service,  on  the  ground  of  celebrating  the  close  of  her 
baptismal  day.  Immediately  after  the  service  she 
had  slipped  off  down  the  street  leading  to  the  rail- 
road, directing  her  steps  towards  Hullaway,  whither 
a  sure  instinct  told  her  Luke  had  wandered. 

She  was  still  in  sight,  having  got  no  further  than 


630  WOOD  AND   STONE 

the  entrance  to  Splash  Lane,  when  Clavering,  who 
had  changed  his  surphce  with  hghtning  rapidity, 
issued  forth  into  the  street.  In  a  flash  he  remarked 
the  direction  of  her  steps,  and  impelled  by  an  impulse 
of  mad  jealousy,  began  blindly  following  her. 

Not  a  few  heads  were  inquisitively  turned,  and  not 
a  few  whispering  comments  were  exchanged,  as  first 
the  squire's  daughter,  and  then  the  young  clergy- 
man, made  their  way  through  the  street. 

As  soon  as  Gladys  had  crossed  the  railroad  and 
struck  out  at  a  sharp  pace  up  the  slope  of  the  meadow 
Clavering  realized  that  wherever  she  intended  to  go 
it  was  not  to  the  house  in  which  lay  James  Andersen. 
Torn  wnth  intolerable  jealousy,  and  anxious,  at  all 
risks,  to  satisfy  his  mind,  one  way  or  the  other,  as 
to  her  relations  with  Luke,  he  deliberately  decided  to 
follow  the  girl  to  whatever  hoped-for  encounter,  or 
carefully  plotted  assignation,  she  was  now  directing 
her  steps.  How  true,  how  exactly  true,  to  his  inter- 
pretation of  Luke's  character,  was  this  astutely  ar- 
ranged meeting,  on  the  very  day  after  his  brother's 
death ! 

At  the  top  of  the  station-field  Gladys  paused  for 
a  moment,  and,  turning  round,  contemplated  the 
little  dwelling  which  was  now  a  house  of  the  dead. 

Luckily  for  Mr.  Clavering,  this  movement  of  hers 
coincided  with  his  arrival  at  the  thick-set  hedge  sepa- 
rating the  field  from  the  metal  track.  He  waited  at 
the  turn-stile  until,  her  abstraction  over,  she  passed 
into  the  lane. 

All  the  way  to  Hullaway  Mr.  Clavering  followed 
her,  hurriedly  concealing  himself  when  there  seemed 
the  least  danger  of  discovery,  and  at  certain  critical 


THE   GRANARY  631 

moments  making  slight  deviations  from  the  direct 
pursuit. 

As  she  drew  near  the  churchyard  the  girl  showed 
evident  signs  of  nervousness  and  apprehension, 
walking  more  slowly,  and  looking  about  her,  and  some- 
times even  pausing  as  if  to  take  breath  and  collect 
her  thoughts. 

It  was  fortunate  for  her  pursuer  at  this  final  mo- 
ment of  the  chase  that  the  row  of  colossal  elms,  of 
which  mention  has  been  made,  interposed  themselves 
between  the  two.  Clavering  was  thus  able  to  approach 
quite  close  to  the  girl  before  she  reached  her  destina- 
tion, for,  making  use  of  these  rugged  trunks,  as  an 
Indian  scout  might  have  done,  he  was  almost  within 
touch  of  her  by  the  time  she  clambered  over  the 
railings. 

The  savage  bite  of  insane  jealousy  drove  from  the 
poor  priest's  head  any  thought  of  how  grotesque  he 
must  have  appeared,  —  could  any  eyes  but  those  of 
field-mice  and  starlings  have  observed  him,  —  with  his 
shiny  black  frock-coat  and  broad-brimmed  hat,  peep- 
ing and  spying  in  the  track  of  this  fair  young  person. 

With  a  countenance  convulsed  with  helpless  fury 
he  watched  the  girl  walk  slowly  and  timidly  up  to 
Luke's  side,  and  saw  the  stone-carver  recognize  her 
and  rise  to  greet  her.  He  could  not  catch  their 
words,  though  he  strained  his  ears  to  do  so,  but  their 
gestures  and  attitudes  were  quite  distinguishable. 

It  was,  indeed,  little  wonder  that  the  agitated 
priest  could  not  overhear  what  Gladys  said,  for  the 
extreme  nervousness  under  which  she  laboured  made 
her  first  utterances  so  broken  and  low  that  even 
her  interlocutor  could  scarcely  follow  them. 


632  WOOD  AND   STONE 

She  laid  a  pleading  hand  on  Luke's  arm.  "I  was 
unhappy,"  she  murmured,  "I  was  unhappy,  and  I 
wanted  to  tell  you.  I've  been  thinking  about  you  all 
day.  I  heard  of  his  death  quite  early  in  the  morning. 
Luke,  —  you're  not  angry  with  me  any  more,  are 
you?  I'd  have  done  anything  that  this  shouldn't 
have  happened!" 

Luke  looked  at  her  searchingly,  but  made,  at  the 
same  time,  an  impatient  movement  of  his  arm,  so 
that  the  hand  she  had  placed  upon  his  sleeve  fell 
to  her  side. 

"Let's  get  away  from  here,  Luke,"  she  implored; 
"anywhere,  —  across  the  fields,  —  I  told  them  at 
home  I  might  go  for  a  walk  after  church.  It'll  be 
all  right.     No  one  will  know." 

"Across  the  fields  —  eh?"  replied  the  stone-carver. 
"  Well  —  I  don't  mind.     What  do  you  say  to  a  walk 
to  Rogerstown?     I  haven't  been  there  since  I  went! 
with  James,  and  there'll  be  a  moon  to  get  home  by."j 
He  looked  at  her  intently,  with  a  certain  bitter  hui 
mour  lurking  in  the  curve  of  his  lips. 

Under  ordinary  circumstances  it  was  w4th  the 
utmost  difficulty  that  Gladys  could  be  persuaded  to 
walk  anywhere.  Her  lethargic  nature  detested  that 
kind  of  exercise.  He  was  amazed  at  the  alacrity  with 
which  she  accepted  the  ofTer. 

Her  eyes  quite  lit  up.  "I'd  love  that,  Luke,  I'd 
simply  love  it!"  she  cried  eagerly.  "Let's  start!  I'll 
walk  as  fast  as  you  like  —  and  I  don't  care  how  late 
we  are!" 

They  moved  out  of  the  churchyard  together,  by  the 
gate  opening  on  the  green. 

Luke  was  interested,  but  not  in  the  least  touched, 


THE   GRANARY  633 

by  the  girl's  chastened  and  submissive  manner.  His 
suggestion  about  Rogerstown  was  really  more  of  a 
sort  of  test  than  anything  else,  to  see  just  how  far 
this  clinging  passivity  of  hers  would  really  go. 

As  they  followed  the  lane  leading  out  of  one  of  the 
side-alleys  of  the  village  towards  the  Roman  Road, 
the  stone-carver  could  not  help  indulging  in  a  certain 
amount  of  silent  psychological  analysis  in  regard  to 
this  change  of  heart  in  his  fair  mistress.  He  seemed 
to  get  a  vision  of  the  great  world-passions,  sweeping 
at  random  through  the  universe,  and  bending  the 
most  obsinate  wills  to  their  caprice. 

On  the  one  hand,  he  thought,  there  is  that  absurd 
Mr.  Clavering,  —  simple,  pure-minded,  a  veritable 
monk  of  God,  —  driven  almost  insane  with  Desire, 
and  on  the  other,  here  is  Gladys,  —  naturally  as 
selfish  and  frivolous  a  young  pagan  as  one  could 
wish  to  amuse  oneself  with,  —  driven  almost  insane 
with  self-oblivious  love!  They  were  like  earthquakes 
and  avalanches,  like  whirlpools  and  water-spouts, 
he  thought,  these  great  world-passions!  They  could 
overwhelm  all  the  good  in  one  person,  and  all  the 
evil  in  another,  with  the  same  sublime  indifference, 
and  in  themselves  —  remain  non-moral,  superhuman, 
elemental! 

In  the  light  of  this  vision,  Luke  could  not  resist  a 
hurried  mental  survey  of  the  various  figures  in  his 
personal  drama.  He  wondered  how  far  his  own  love 
for  James  could  be  said  to  belong  to  this  formidable 
category.  No!  He  supposed  that  both  he  and  Mr. 
Quincunx  were  too  self-possessed,  or  too  epicurean, 
ever  to  be  thus  swept  out  of  their  path.  His  brother 
was  clearly  a  victim  of  these  erotic  Valkyries,  so  was 


634  WOOD  AND   STONE  \ 

Ninsy  Lintot,  and  in  a  lesser  degree,  he  shrewdly 
surmised,  young  Philip  Wone.  He  himself,  he  sup- 
posed, was,  in  these  things,  amourous  and  vicious 
rather  than  passionate.  So  he  had  always  imagined 
Gladys  to  have  been.  But  Gladys  had  been  as  com- 
pletely swept  out  of  the  shallows  of  her  viciousness, 
by  this  overpowering  obsession,  as  Mr.  Clavering 
had  been  swept  out  of  the  shallows  of  his  puritanism, 
by  the  same  power.  If  that  fantastic  theory  of  Vennie 
Seldom's  about  the  age-long  struggle  between  the  two 
Hills  —  between  the  stone  of  the  one  and  the  wood  of 
the  other  —  had  any  germ  of  truth  in  it,  it  was  clear 
that  these  elemental  passions  belonged  to  a  region 
of  activity  remote  from  either,  and  as  indifferent  to 
both,  as  the  great  zodiacal  signs  were  indifferent  to 
the  solar  planets.  ^ 

Luke  had  just  arrived  at  this  philosophical,  or,  if 
the  reader  pleases,  mystical  conclusion,  when  they 
emerged  upon  the  Roman  Road. 

Ascending  an  abrupt  hill,  the  last  eminence  between 
Hullaway  and  far-distant  ranges,  they  found  them- 
selves looking  down  over  an  immense  melancholy 
plain,  in  the  centre  of  which,  on  the  banks  of  a  muddy 
river,  stood  the  ancient  Roman  stronghold  of  Rogers- 
town,  the  birth-place,  so  Luke  always  loved  to  re- 
mind himself,  of  the  famous  monkish  scientist  Roger 
Bacon. 

The  sun  had  already  disappeared,  and  the  dark  line 
of  the  Mendip  Hills  on  the  northern  horizon  were 
wrapped  in  a  thick,  purple  haze.  I 

The  plain  they  looked  down  upon  was  cut  into  two  |' 
equal  segments  by  the  straight  white  road  they  were  jj 
to  follow,  —  if  Luke  was  serious  in  his  intention,  —  N 


THE   GRANARY 635 

and  all  along  the  edges  of  the  road,  and  spreading  in 
transverse  lines  across  the  level  fields,  were  deep, 
reedy  ditches,  bordered  in  places  by  pollard  wil- 
lows. 

The  whole  plain,  subject,  in  autumn  and  winter, 
to  devastating  floods,  was  really  a  sort  of  inlet  or 
estuary  of  the  great  Somersetshire  marshes,  lying 
further  west,  which  are  collectively  known  as 
Sedgemoor. 

Gladys  could  not  refrain  from  giving  vent  to  a 
slight  movement  of  instinctive  reluctance,  when  she 
saw  how  close  the  night  was  upon  them,  and  how  long 
the  road  seemed,  but  she  submissively  suppressed  any 
word  of  protest,  when,  with  a  silent  touch  upon 
her  arm,  her  companion  led  her  forward,  down  the 
shadowy  incline. 

Their  figures  were  still  visible  —  two  dark  isolated 
forms  upon  the  pale  roadway  —  when,  hot  and  panting, 
Mr.  Clavering  arrived  at  the  same  hill-top.  With  a 
sigh  of  profound  relief  he  recognized  that  he  had  not 
lost  his  fugitives.  The  only  question  was,  where 
were  they  going,  and  for  what  purpose.'*  He  remained 
for  several  minutes  gloomy  and  watchful  at  his  post 
of  observation. 

They  were  now  nearly  half  a  mile  across  the  plain, 
and  their  receding  figures  had  already  begun  to  grow 
indistinct  in  the  twilight,  when  Mr.  Clavering  saw 
them  suddenly  leave  the  road  and  debouch  to  the 
left.  "Ah!"  he  muttered  to  himself,  "They're  going 
home  by  Hullaway  Chase!" 

This  Hullaway  Chase  was  a  rough  tract  of  pastur- 
age a  little  to  the  east  of  the  level  flats,  and  raised 
slightly  above  them.     From  its  southern  extremity  a 


636  WOOD  AND   STONE 

long  narrow  lane,  skirting  the  outlying  cottages  of 
the  village,  led  straight  across  the  intervening  uplands 
to  Nevilton  Park.  It  was  clearly  towards  this  lane, 
by  a  not  much  frequented  foot-path  over  the  ditches, 
that  Gladys  and  Luke  were  proceeding. 

To  anyone  as  well  acquainted  as  Clavering  was 
with  the  general  outline  of  the  country  the  route  that 
the  lovers  —  or  whatever  their  curious  relation 
justifies  us  in  calling  them  —  must  needs  take,  to 
return  to  Nevilton,  was  now  as  clearly  marked  as 
if  it  were  indicated  on  a  map. 

"Curse  him!"  muttered  the  priest,  "I  hope  he's 
not  going  to  drown  her  in  those  brooks!" 

He  let  his  gaze  wander  across  the  level  expanse  at 
his  feet.  How  could  he  get  close  to  them,  he  won- 
dered, so  as  to  catch  even  a  stray  sentence  or  two  of 
what  they  were  saying. 

His  passion  had  reached  such  a  point  of  insanity 
that  he  longed  to  be  transformed  into  one  of  those 
dark-winged  rooks  that  now  in  a  thin  melancholy  line 
were  flying  over  their  heads,  so  that  he  might  swoop 
down  above  them  and  follow  them  —  follow  them  — 
every  step  of  the  way!  He  was  like  a  man  drawn  to 
the  edge  of  a  precipice  and  magnetized  by  the  very 
danger  of  the  abyss.  To  be  near  them,  to  listen  to 
what  they  said,  —  the  craving  for  that  possessed  him 
with  a  fixed  and  obstinate  hunger! 

Suddenly  he  shook  his  cane  in  the  air  and  almost 
leaped  for  joy.  He  remembered  the  existence,  at 
the  spot  where  the  lane  they  were  seeking  began,  of 
a  large  dilapidated  barn,  used,  by  the  yeoman-farmer 
to  whom  the  Chase  belonged,  as  a  rough  store-house 
for  cattle-food.     The  spot  was  so  attractive  a  resting- 


i 


THE   GRANARY  637 

place  for  persons  tired  with  walking,  that  it  seemed 
as  though  it  would  be  a  strange  chance  indeed  if  the 
two  wanderers  did  not  take  advantage  of  it.  The 
point  was,  could  be  forestall  them  and  arrive  there 
first? 

He  surveyed  the  landscape  around  him  with  an 
anxious  eye.  It  seemed  as  though  by  following  the 
ridge  of  the  hill  upon  w^hich  he  stood,  and  crossing 
every  obstacle  that  intervened,  he  ought  to  be  able 
to  do  so  —  and  to  do  so  without  losing  sight  of  the 
two  companions,  as  they  unsuspiciously  threaded  their 
way  over  the  flats. 

Having  made  his  resolution,  he  lost  no  time  in 
putting  it  into  action.  He  clambered  without  diffi- 
culty into  the  meadow  on  his  right,  and  breaking, 
in  his  excitement,  into  a  run,  he  forced  his  way 
through  three  successive  bramble-hedges,  and  as 
many  dew-drenched  turnip-fields,  without  the  least 
regard  to  the  effect  of  this  procedure  upon  his  Sunday 
attire. 

Every  now  and  then,  as  the  contours  of  the  ground 
served,  he  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  figures  in  the  valley 
below,  and  the  sight  hastened  the  impetuosity  of  his 
speed.  Once  he  felt  sure  he  observed  them  pause 
and  exchange  an  embrace,  but  this  may  have  been 
an  illusive  mirage  created  by  the  mad  fumes  of  the 
tempestuous  jealousy  which  kept  mounting  higher 
and  higher  into  his  head.  Recklessly  and  blindly  he 
rushed  on,  performing  feats  of  agility  and  endurance, 
such  as  in  normal  hours  would  have  been  utterly 
impossible. 

From  the  moment  he  decided  upon  this  desperate 
undertaking,   to  the   moment,   when,   hot,   breathless, 


638  WOOD  AND   STONE 

and  dishevelled,  he  reached  his  destination,  only  a 
brief  quarter  of  an  hour  had  elapsed. 

He  entered  the  barn  leaving  the  door  wide-open 
behind  him.  In  its  interior  tightly  packed  bundles 
of  dark-coloured  hay  rose  up  almost  to  the  roof.  The 
floor  was  littered  with  straw  and  newly-cut  clover. 

On  one  side  of  the  barn,  beneath  the  piled-up  hay, 
was  a  large  shelving  heap  of  threshed  oats.  Here,  ob- 
viously, was  the  sort  of  place,  if  the  lovers  paused  at 
this  spot  at  all,  where  they  would  be  tempted  to  recline. 

Directly  opposite  these  oats,  in  the  portion  of  the 
shed  that  was  most  in  shadow,  Clavering  observed 
a  narrow  slit  between  the  hay-bundles.  He  ap- 
proached this  aperture  and  tried  to  wedge  himself 
into  it.  The  protruding  stalks  of  the  hay  pricked  his 
hands  and  face,  and  the  dust  choked  him. 

With  angry  coughs  and  splutters,  and  with  sundry 
savage  expletives  by  no  means  suitable  to  a  priest  of 
the  church,  he  at  length  succeeded  in  firmly  imbedding 
himself  in  this  impenetrable  retreat.  He  worked  him- 
self so  far  into  the  shadow,  that  not  the  most  cautious 
eye  could  have  discerned  his  presence.  His  sole 
danger  lay  in  the  fact  that  the  dust  might  very  easily 
give  him  an  irresistible  fit  of  sneezing.  With  the 
cessation  of  his  violent  struggles,  however,  this  danger 
seemed  to  diminish;  for  the  dust  subsided  as  quickly 
as  it  had  been  raised,  and  otherwise,  as  he  leant 
luxuriously  back  upon  his  warm-scented  support,  his 
position  was  by  no  means  uncomfortable. 

Meanwhile  Luke  and  Gladys  were  slowly  and  de- 
liberately crossing  the  darkening  water-meadows. 

Gladys,  whose  geographical  knowledge  of  the  dis- 
trict   was   limited   to   the   immediate   vicinity   of   her 


THE   GRANARY 639 

home  had  not  the  remotest  guess  as  to  where  she 
was  being  led.  For  all  she  knew  Luke  might  have 
gone  crazy,  like  his  brother,  and  be  now  intending  to 
plunge  both  himself  and  her  into  the  depths  of  some 
lonely  pool  or  weir.  Nevertheless,  she  continued 
passively  and  meekly  following  him,  walking,  when 
the  path  along  the  dyke's  edge  narrowed,  at  some  few 
paces  behind  him,  with  that  peculiar  air  of  being  a 
led  animal,  which  one  often  observes  in  the  partners 
of  tramps,  as  they  plod  the  roads  in  the  wake  of  their 
masters. 

The  expanse  they  traversed  in  this  manner  was 
possessed  of  a  peculiar  character  of  its  own,  a  char- 
acter which  that  especial  hour  of  twilight  seemed  to 
draw  forth  and  emphasize.  It  differed  from  similar 
tracts  of  marsh-land,  such  as  may  be  found  by  the 
sea's  edge,  in  being  devoid  of  any  romantic  horizon 
to  afford  a  spiritual  escape  from  the  gloom  it  diffused. 

It  was  melancholy.  It  was  repellant.  It  was  sin- 
ister. It  lacked  the  element  of  poetic  expansiveness. 
It  gave  the  impression  of  holding  grimly  to  some 
dark  obscene  secret,  which  no  visitation  of  sun  or 
moon  would  ever  cajole  it  into  divulging. 

It  depressed  without  overwhelming.  It  saddened 
without  inspiring.  With  its  reeds,  its  mud,  its  wil- 
lows, its  livid  phosphorescent  ditches,  it  produced 
uneasiness  rather  than  awe,  and  disquietude  rather 
than  solemnity. 

Bounded  by  rolling  hills  on  all  sides  save  one,  it 
gave  the  persons  who  moved  across  it  the  sensation 
of  being  enclosed  in  some  vast  natural  arena. 

Gladys  wished  she  had  brought  her  cloak  with 
her,  as  the  filmy  white  mists  rose  like  ghosts  out  of 


640  WOOD  AND   STONE 

the    stagnant    ditches,    and    with    clammy    persistence 
invaded  her  unprotected  form. 

It  was  one  of  those  places  that  seem  to  suggest  the 
transaction  of  no  stirring  or  heroic  deeds,  but  of 
gloomy,  wretched,  chance-driven  occurrences.  A  be- 
trayed army  might  have  surrendered  there. 

Luke  seemed  to  give  himself  up  with  grim  reci- 
procity to  the  influences  of  the  spot.  He  appeared 
totally  oblivious  of  his  meek  companion,  and  except 
to  offer  her  languid,  absent-minded  assistance  across 
various  gates  and  dams,  he  remained  as  completely 
wrapped  in  reserve  as  were  the  taciturn  levels  over 
which  they  passed. 

It  was  with  an  incredible  sense  of  relief  that  Gladys 
found  herself  in  the  drier,  more  wholesome,  atmos- 
sphere  of  Hullaway  Chase.  Here,  as  they  walked 
briskly  side  by  side  over  the  thyme-scented  turf,  it 
seemed  that  the  accumulated  heat  of  the  day,  which, 
from  the  damp  marsh-land  only  drew  forth  miasmic 
vapours,  flung  into  the  fragrant  air  delicious  waftings 
of  warm  earth-breath.  With  still  greater  relief,  and 
even  with  a  little  cry  of  joy,  she  caught  sight  of  the 
friendly  open  door  of  the  capacious  barn,  and  the 
shadowy  inviting  heap  of  loose-flung  oats  lying  be- 
neath its  wall  of  hay. 

"Oh,  we  must  go  in  here!"  she  cried,  "what  an 
adorable  place!" 

They  entered,  and  the  girl  threw  upon  Luke  one  of 
her  slow,  long,  amorous  glances.  "Kiss  me!"  she 
said,  holding  up  her  mouth  to  him  beseechingly. 

The  faint  light  of  the  dying  day  fell  with  a  pale 
glimmer  upon  her  soft  throat  and  rounded  chin. 
Luke  found  himself  disinclined  to  resist  her. 


THE   GRANARY  641 

There  were  tears  on  the  girl's  cheek  when,  loosening 
her  hold  upon  his  neck,  she  sank  down  on  the  idyllic 
couch  offered  them,  and  closed  her  eyes  in  childish 
contentment. 

Luke  hung  over  her  thoughtfully  and  sadly.  There 
is  always  something  sad,  —  something  that  seems  to 
bring  with  it  a  withering  breath  from  the  ultimate 
futility  of  the  universe,  —  about  a  lover's  recognition 
that  the  form  which  formerly  thrilled  him  with 
ecstasy,  now  leaves  him  cold  and  unmoved.  Such 
sadness,  chilly  and  desolate  as  the  hand  of  death 
itself,  crept  over  the  stone-carver's  heart,  as  he  looked 
at  the  gently-stirring  breast  and  softly-parted  lips 
of  his  beautiful  mistress.  He  bent  down  and  kissed 
her  forehead,  caressing  her  passively  yielded  fin- 
gers. 

She  opened  her  eyes  and  smiled  at  him,  the  linger- 
ing smile  of  a  soothed  and  happy  infant. 

They  remained  thus,  silent  and  at  rest,  for  several 
moments.  It  was  not  long,  however,  before  the 
subtle  instinct  of  an  enamoured  woman  made  the 
girl  aware  that  her  friend's  responsiveness  had  been 
but  a  momentary  impulse.  She  started  up,  her  eyes 
wide-open  and  her  lips  trembling. 

"Luke!"  she  murmured,  "Luke,  darling, — "  Her 
voice  broke,  in  a  curious  little  sob. 

Luke  gazed  at  her  blankly,  thankful  that  the  weight 
of  weary  foreknowledge  upon  his  face  was  concealed 
from  her  by  the  growing  darkness. 

"I  want  to  say  to  you,  my  dear  love,"  the  girl 
went  on,  her  bosom  rising  and  falling  in  pitiful  em- 
barrassment, and  her  white  fingers  nervously  scooping 
up  handful  after  handful  of  the  shadowy  grain. 


642  WOOD  AND  STONE 

"I  want  to  say  to  you  something  that  is  —  that 
is  very  serious  —  for  us  both,  Luke,  —  I  want  to 
tell  you, " 

Her  voice  once  more  died  away,  in  the  same  inar- 
ticulate and  curious  gurgle,  like  tlie  sob  of  water 
running  under  a  weir. 

Luke  rose  to  his  feet  and  stood  in  front  of  her. 
"It's  all  right,"  he  said  calmly.  "You  needn't  agi- 
tate yourself.     I  understand." 

The  girl  covered  her  face  with  her  hands.  "But 
what  shall  I  do?  What  shall  I  do?"  she  sobbed.  "I 
can't  marry  Ralph  like  this.  He'll  kill  me  when  he 
finds  out.  I'm  so  afraid  of  him,  Luke  —  you  don't 
know,  —  you  don't  know,  — " 

"He'll    forgive    you,"    answered    the    stone-carver] 
quietly.     "He's  not  a  person  to  burst  out  like  that. 
Lots  of  people  have  to  confess  these  little  things  after] 
they're  married.     Some  men  aren't  half  so  particular] 
as  you  girls  think." 

Gladys  raised  her  head  and  gave  her  friend  a  long 
queer  look,  the  full  import  of  which  was  concealed 
from  him  in  the  darkness.  She  made  a  futile  little) 
groping  movement  with  her  hand. 

"Luke,"  she  whispered,  "I  must  just  say  this  to 
you  even  if  it  makes  you  angry.  I  shouldn't  be  happy 
afterwards  —  whatever  happens  —  if  I  didn't  say  it. 
I  want  you  to  know  that  I'm  ready,  if  you  wish,  if  — 
if  you  love  me  enough  for  that,  Luke,  —  to  go  away 
with  you  anywhere!  I  feel  it  isn't  as  it  used  to  be. 
I  feel  everything's  different.  But  I  want  you  to  know, 
—  to  know  without  any  mistake  —  that  I'd  go  at 
once  —  willingly  —  wherever  you  took  me ! 

"It's    not    that    I'm    begging    you    to    marry    me," 


TPIE   GRANARY  043 

she  wailed,  "it's  only  that  I  love  you,  love  you  and 
want  you  so  frightfully,  my  darling! 

"I  wouldn't  worry  you,  Luke,"  she  added,  in  a  low, 
pitiful  little  voice,  that  seemed  to  emerge  rather  from 
the  general  shadowiness  of  the  place  than  from  a 
human  being's  lips,  "I  wouldn't  tease  you,  or  scold 
you  when  you  enjoyed  yourself!  It's  only  that  I 
want  to  be  with  you,  that  I  want  to  be  near  you. 
I  never  thought  it  would  come  to  this.  I  thought  — " 
Her  voice  died  away  again  into  the  darkness. 

Luke  began  pacing  up  and  down  the  floor  of  the 
barn. 

Once  more  she  spoke.  "I'd  be  faithful  to  you, 
Luke,  married  or  unmmarried,  —  and  I'd  work, 
though  I  know  you  won't  believe  that.  But  I  can 
do  quite  hard  work,  when  I  like!" 

By  some  malignity  of  chance,  or  perhaps  by  a 
natural  reaction  from  her  pleading  words,  Luke's  mind 
reverted  to  her  tone  and  temper  on  that  June  morn- 
ing when  she  insulted  him  by  a  present  of  money. 

"No,  Gladys,"  he  said.  "It  won't  do.  You  and 
I  weren't  made  for  each  other.  There  are  certain 
things  —  many  things  —  in  me  that  you'll  never 
understand,  and  I  daresay  there  are  things  in  you 
that  I  never  shall.  We're  not  made  for  one  another, 
child,  I  tell  you.  We  shouldn't  be  happy  for  a  week. 
I  know  myself,  and  I  know  you,  and  I'm  sure  it 
wouldn't  do. 

"Don't  you  fret  yourself  about  Dangelis.  If  he 
finds  out,  he  finds  out  —  and  that's  the  end  of  it. 
But  I  swear  to  you  that  I  know  him  well  enough  to 
know  that  you've  nothing  to  be  afraid  of  —  even  if 
he  does  find  out.    He's  not  the  kind  of  man  to  make 


644  WOOD  AND  STONE 

a  fuss.  I  can  see  exactly  the  way  he'd  take  it.  He'd 
be  sorry  for  you  and  laugh  at  himself,  and  plunge 
desperately  into  his  painting. 

"I  like  Dangelis,  I  tell  you  frankly.  I  think  he's 
a  thoroughly  generous  and  large-minded  fellow.  Of 
course  I've  hardly  seen  him  to  speak  to,  but  you 
can't  be  mistaken  about  a  man  like  that.  At  least 
I  can't!  I  seem  to  know  him  in  and  out,  up  hill  and 
down  dale. 

"Make  a  fuss?  Not  he!  He'll  make  this  country 
ring  and  ting  with  the  fame  of  his  pictures.  That's 
what  he'll  do!  And  as  for  being  horrid  to  you  —  not 
he!  I  know  him  better  than  that.  He'll  be  too  much 
in  love  with  you,  too,  —  you  little  demon!  That's 
another  point  to  bear  in  mind. 

"Oh,  you'll  have  the  whip-hand  of  him,  never  fear, — 
and  our  son,  —  I  hope  it  is  a  son  my  dear!  —  will 
be  treated  as  if  it  were  his  own. 

"I  know  him,  I  tell  you!  He's  a  thoroughly  decent 
fellow,  though  a  bit  of  a  fool,  no  doubt.  But  we're 
all  that! 

"Don't  you  be  a  little  goose,  Gladys,  and  get 
fussed  up  and  worried  over  nothing.  After  all,  what 
does  it  matter?  Life's  such  a  mad  affair  anyway! 
All  we  can  do  is  to  map  things  to  the  best  of  our 
ability,  and  then  chance  it. 

"We're  all  on  the  verge  of  a  precipice.  Do  you 
think  I  don't  realize  that?  But  that's  no  reason  why 
we  should  rush  blindly  up  to  the  thing,  and  throw 
ourselves  over.  And  it  would  be  nothing  else  than 
that,  nothing  else  than  sheer  madness,  for  you  and  I 
to  go  off  together. 

"Do  you  think  your  father  would  give  us  a  penny? 


THE   GRANARY  645 

Not  he!  I  detect  in  your  father,  Gladys,  an  ex- 
traordinary vein  of  obstinacy.  You  haven't  clashed 
up  against  it  yet,  but  try  and  play  any  of  these  games 
on  him,  and  you'll  see! 

"No;  one  thing  you  may  be  perfectly  sure  of,  and 
that  is,  that  whatever  he  finds  out,  Dangelis  will 
never  breathe  a  word  to  your  father.  He's  madly  in 
love  with  you,  girl,  I  tell  you;  and  if  I'm  out  of  the 
way,  you'll  be  able  to  do  just  what  you  like  with 
him!" 

It  was  completely  dark  now,  and  when  Luke's 
oration  came  to  an  end  there  was  no  sound  in  the 
barn  except  a  low  sobbing. 

"Come  on,  child;  we  must  be  getting  home,  or 
you'll  be  frightfully  late.  Here!  give  me  your  hand. 
Where  are  you.'" 

He  groped  about  in  the  darkness  until  his  sleeve 
brushed  against  her  shoulder.  It  was  trembling  under 
her  efforts  to  suppress  her  sobs. 

He  got  hold  of  her  wrists  and  pulled  her  to  her 
feet.  "Come  on,  my  dear,"  he  repeated,  "we  must 
get  out  of  this  now.  Give  me  one  nice  kiss  before 
we  go." 

She  permitted  herself  to  be  caressed  —  passive  and 
unresisting  in  his  arms. 

In  the  darkness  they  touched  the  outer  edge  of 
Mr.  Clavering's  hiding-place,  and  the  girl,  swaying 
a  little  backwards  under  Luke's  endearments,  felt 
the  pressure  of  the  hay-wall  behind  her.  She  did  not, 
however,  feel  the  impassioned  touch  of  the  choking 
kiss  which  the  poor  imprisoned  priest  desperately 
imprinted  on  a  loose  tress  of  her  hair. 

It   was   one   of   those   pitiful   and   grotesque   situa- 


646  WOOD  AND  STONE 

tions  which  seem  sometimes  to  arise,  —  as  our  fan- 
tastic planet  turns  on  its  orbit,  —  for  no  other  purpose 
than  that  of  gratifying  some  malign  vein  of  goblin- 
like irony  in  the  system  of  things. 

That  at  the  moment  when  Luke,  under  the  spell 
of  the  shadowy  fragrance  of  the  place,  and  the  pliant 
submissiveness  of  the  girl's  form,  threw  something 
of  his  old  ardour  into  his  kiss,  her  other,  more  des- 
perate love  should  have  dared  such  an  approach,  was 
a  coincidence  apparently  of  the  very  kind  to  appeal 
to  the  perverse  taste  of  this  planetary  humour. 

The  actual  result  of  such  a  strange  consentane- 
ousness  of  rival  emotion  was  that  the  three  human 
heads  remained  for  a  brief  dramatic  moment  in  close 
juxtaposition,  —  the  two  fair  ones  and  the  dark  one 
so  near  one  another,  that  it  might  have  seemed  almost 
inevitable  that  their  thoughts  should  interact  in  that 
fatal  proximity. 

The    pitiful    pathos    of    the    whole    human    comedy 
might  well  have  been  brought  home  to  any  curious 
observer  able  to  pierce  that  twilight!      Such   an   ob- 
server would  have  felt  towards  those  three  poor  ob- 
sessed   craniums    the    same    sort    of    tenderness    that! 
they   themselves   would   have  been  conscious   of,   had! 
they    suddenly    come    across    a    sleeping    person    or    a| 
dead  body. 

Strange,  that  the  ultimate  pity  in  these  things,  — -1 
in   this   blind   antagonistic   striving   of   human   desires] 
under    such    gracious    flesh    and    blood  —  should    only^ 
arouse  these  tolerant  emotions  when  they  are  no  longer 
of  any  avail!     Had  some  impossible  bolt  from  heaven 
stricken  these  three  impassioned  ones  in  their  tragic 
approximation,    how,  —  long     afterwards,  —  the     dis- 


THE   GRANARY  647 

coverer  of  the  three  skeletons  would  have  moralized 
upon  their  fate!  As  it  was,  there  was  nothing  but 
the  irony  of  the  gods  to  read  what  the  irony  of  the 
gods  was  writing  upon  that  moment's  drowning 
sands. 

When  Luke  and  Gladys  left  the  barn,  and  hurriedly, 
under  the  rising  moon,  retook  their  way  towards 
Nevilton,  Clavering  emerged  from  his  concealment 
dazed  and  stupefied.  He  threw  himself  down  in  the 
darkness  on  the  heap  of  oats  and  strove  to  give  form 
and  coherence  to  the  wild  flood  of  thoughts  which 
swept  through  him. 

So  this  was  what  he  had  come  out  to  learn!  This 
was  the  knowledge  that  his  mad  jealousy  had  driven 
him  to  snatch! 

He  thought  of  the  exquisite  sacredness  —  for  him  — 
of  that  morning's  ritual  in  the  church,  and  of  how 
easily  he  had  persuaded  himself  to  read  into  the 
girl's  preoccupied  look  something  more  than  natural 
sadness  over  Andersen's  death.  He  had  indeed,  — 
only  those  short  hours  ago,  — ■  allowed  himself  the 
sweet  illusion  that  this  religious  initiation  really 
meant,  for  his  pagan  love,  some  kind  of  Vita 
Nuova. 

The  fates  had  rattled  their  dice,  however,  to  a 
different  tune.  The  unfortunate  girl  was  indeed 
entering  upon  a  Vita  Nuova,  but  how  hideously  dif- 
ferent a  one  from  that  which  had  been  his  hope! 

On  Wednesday  came  the  confirmation  service. 
How  could  he,  —  with  any  respect  for  his  conscience 
as  a  guardian  of  these  sacred  rites,  —  permit  Gladys 
to  be  confirmed  now?  Yet  what  ought  he  to  do? 
Drops  of  cold  sweat  stood  upon  his  forehead  as  he 


G48  WOOD  AND   STONE 

wondered  whether  it  was  incumbent  upon  him  to 
take  the  first  train  the  following  morning  for  the 
bishop's  palace  and  to  demand  an  interview. 

No.  Tomorrow  the  prelate  would  be  starting  on 
his  episcopal  tour.  Clavering  would  have  to  pursue 
him  from  one  remote  country  village  to  another,  and 
what  a  pursuit  that  would  be!  He  recoiled  from  the 
idea  with  sick  aversion. 

Could  he  then  suppress  his  fatal  knowledge  and  let 
the  event  take  place  without  protest?  To  act  in 
such  a  manner  would  be  nothing  less  than  to  play 
the  part  of  an  accomplice  in  the  girl's  sin. 

Perhaps  when  the  bishop  actually  appeared  he 
would  be  able  to  secure  a  confidential  interview  with 
him  and  lay  the  whole  matter  before  him.  Or  should 
he  act  on  his  own  responsibility,  and  write  to  Gladys 
himself,  telling  her  that  under  the  circumstances  it 
would  be  best  for  her  to  stay  away  from  the  cere- 
mony? 

What  reason  could  he  give  for  such  an  extraordinary 
mandate?  Could  he  bluntly  indicate  to  her,  in  black 
and  white,  the  secret  he  had  discovered,  and  the 
manner  of  its  discovery?  To  accuse  her  on  the  ground 
of  mere  village  gossip  would  be  to  lay  himself  open 
to  shameful  humiliation.  Was  he,  in  any  case,  justi- 
fied in  putting  the  fatal  information,  gathered  in  this 
way,  to  so  drastic  a  use?  It  was  only  in  his  madness 
as  a  jealous  lover  that  he  had  possessed  himself  of 
this  knowledge.  As  priest  of  Nevilton  he  knew 
nothing. 

He  had  no  right  to  know  anything.  No;  he  must 
pay  the  penalty  of  his  shameful  insanity  by  bearing 
this    burden   in    silence,    even   though    his    conscience 


THE   GRANARY  649 

groaned  and  cracked  beneath  the  weight.  Such  a 
silence,  with  its  attendant  misery  of  self-accusation 
and  shame,  was  all  he  could  offer  to  his  treacherous 
enchantress  as  a  tacit  recompense  for  having  stolen 
her  secret. 

He  rose  and  left  the  granary.  As  he  walked  home- 
ward, along  the  Nevilton  road,  avoiding  by  a  sort 
of  scrupulous  reaction  the  shorter  route  followed  by 
the  others,  it  seemed  to  him  as  though  the  night  had 
never  been  more  sultry,  or  the  way  more  loaded  with 
the  presence  of  impendent  calamity. 


CHAPTER   XXV 

METAMORPHOSIS 

THE  day  of  James  Andersen's  funeral  and  of 
Gladys'  confirmation  happened  to  coincide  with 
a  remarkable  and  unexpected  event  in  the  life 
of  Mr.  Quincunx.  Whatever  powers,  lurking  in  air 
or  earth,  were  attempting  at  that  moment  to  influ- 
ence the  fatal  stream  of  events  in  Nevilton,  must 
have  been  grimly  conscious  of  something  preordained 
and  inevitable  about  this  eccentric  man's  drift  to- 
wards appalling  moral  disaster. 

It  seemed  as  though  nothing  on  earth  now  could 
stop  the  marriage  of  Lacrima  and  Goring,  and  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  moralist,  or  even  of  the  per- 
son of  normal  decency,  such  a  marriage,  if  it  really 
did  lead  to  Mr.  Quincunx's  pensioning  at  the  hands 
of  his  enemy,  necessarily  held  over  him  a  shame  and 
a  disgrace  proportionate  to  the  outrage  done  to  the 
girl  who  loved  him.  What  these  evil  powers  played 
upon,  if  evil  powers  they  were,  —  and  not  the  blind 
laws  of  cause  and  effect,  —  was  the  essential  character 
of  Mr.  Quincunx,  which  nothing  in  heaven  nor  earth 
seemed  able  to  change. 

There  are  often,  however,  elements  in  our  fate, 
which  lie,  it  might  seem,  deeper  than  any  calculable 
prediction,  deeper,  it  may  be,  than  the  influence  of 
the  most  powerful  supernatural  agents,  and  these 
elements  —  unstirred  by  angel  or    devil  —  are    some- 


METAMORPHOSIS  G5 1 

times  roused  to  activity  by  the  least  expected  cause. 
It  is,  at  these  moments,  as  though  Fate,  in  the  incal- 
culable comprehensiveness  of  her  immense  designs, 
condescended  to  make  use  of  Chance,  her  elfish 
sister,  to  carry  out  what  the  natural  and  normal 
stream  of  things  would  seem  to  have  decreed  as  an 
impossibility. 

Probably  not  a  living  soul  who  knew  him,  —  cer- 
tainly not  Lacrima,  —  had  the  least  expectation  of 
any  chance  of  change  in  Mr.  Quincunx.  But  then 
none  of  these  persons  had  really  sounded  the  depths 
in  the  soul  of  the  man.  There  were  certain  mysterious 
and  unfathomable  gulfs  in  the  sea-floor  of  Mr.  Quin- 
cunx's being  which  would  have  exhausted  all  the  sor- 
ceries of  Witch-Bessie  even  to  locate. 

So  fantastic  and  surprising  are  the  ways  of  des- 
tiny, that,  —  as  shall  be  presently  seen,  —  what 
neither  gods  nor  devils,  nor  men  nor  angels,  could 
effect,  was  effected  by  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a 
travelling  circus. 

The  day  of  the  burying  of  James  and  the  con- 
firmation of  Gladys  brought  into  Nevilton  a  curious 
cortege  of  popular  entertainers.  This  cortege  con- 
sisted of  one  of  those  small  wandering  circuses,  which, 
during  the  month  of  August  are  wont  to  leave  the 
towns  and  move  leisurely  among  the  remoter  country 
villages,  staying  nowhere  more  than  a  night,  and 
taking  advantage  of  any  local  festival  or  club-meet- 
ing to  enhance  their  popularity. 

The  circus  in  question,  —  flamingly  entitled 
Porter's  Universal  World-Show,  —  was  owned  and 
conducted  by  a  certain  Job  Love,  a  shrewd  and  ava- 
ricious ruJSSan,  who  boasted,  though  with  little  justi- 


65^  WOOD  AND  STONE 

fication,  the  inheritance  of  gipsy  blood.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  authentic  gipsy  tribes  gave  Mr.  Love  an 
extremely  wide  berth,  avoiding  his  path  as  they  would 
have  avoided  the  path  of  the  police.  This  cautious 
attitude  was  not  confined,  however,  to  gipsies.  Every 
species  of  itinerant  hawker  and  pedler  avoided  the 
path  of  Mr.  Love,  and  the  few  toy-booths  and  sweet- 
stalls  that  followed  his  noisy  roundabouts  were  a 
department  of  his  own  providing. 

It  was  late  on  Tuesday  night  when  the  World-Show 
established  itself  in  Nevilton  Square.  The  sound  of 
hammers  and  the  barking  of  dogs  was  the  last  thing 
that  the  villagers  heard  before  they  slept,  and  the 
first  thing  they  heard  when  they  awoke. 

The  master  of  the  World-Show  spent  the  night 
according  to  his  custom  in  solitary  regal  grandeur 
in  the  largest  of  his  caravans.  The  sun  had  not, 
however,  pierced  the  white  mists  in  the  Nevilton 
orchards  before  Mr.  Love  was  up  and  abroad.  The 
first  thing  he  did,  on  descending  the  steps  of  his 
caravan,  was  to  wash  his  hands  and  face  in  the  basin 
of  the  stone  fountain.  His  next  proceeding  was  to 
measure  out  into  a  little  metal  cup  which  he  pro- 
duced from  his  pocket  a  small  quantity  of  brandy 
and  to  pour  this  refreshment,  diluted  with  water  from 
the  fountain,  down  his  capacious  throat. 

Mr.  Love  was  a  lean  man,  of  furtive  and  irascible 
appearance.  His  countenance,  bleached  by  exposure 
into  a  species  of  motley-coloured  leather,  shone  after 
its  immersion  in  the  fountain  like  the  knob  of  a  well- 
worn  cudgel.  His  whitish  hair,  cut  in  convict  style 
close  to  his  head,  emphasized  the  polished  mahogany 
of  his   visage,   from   the   upper  portion  of  which  his 


METAMORPHOSIS  653 


sky-blue  eyes,  small  and  glittering,  shone  out  de- 
fiantly upon  the  world,  like  ominous  jewels  set  in  the 
forehead  of  an  obscene  and  smoke-darkened  idol. 

Having  replaced  his  cup  and  flask  in  his  pocket, 
the  master  of  the  World-Show  looked  anxiously  at 
the  omens  of  the  weather,  snuffing  the  morning  breeze 
with  the  air  of  one  not  lightly  to  be  fooled  either  by 
rain  or  shine.  Returning  to  the  still  silent  circus, 
he  knocked  sharply  with  his  knuckles  at  the  door  of 
the  smallest  of  the  three  caravans. 

"Flick!"  he  shouted,  "let  me  in!  Flick!  Old 
Flick!  Darn  'ee,  man,  for  a  blighting  sand-louse! 
Open  the  door,  God  curse  you!  Old  Flick!  Old 
Flick!     Old  Flick!" 

Thus  assaulted,  the  door  of  the  caravan  was  opened 
from  within,  and  Mr.  Love  pushed  his  way  into  the 
interior.  A  strange  enough  sight  met  him  when 
once  inside. 

The  individual  apostrophized  as  "Old  Flick"  closed 
and  bolted  the  door  with  extraordinary  precaution, 
as  soon  as  his  master  had  entered,  and  then  turned 
and  hovered  nervously  before  him,  while  Mr.  Love 
sank  down  on  the  only  chair  in  the  place.  The 
caravan  was  bare  of  all  furniture  except  a  rough 
cooking-stove  and  a  three-legged  deal  table.  But  it 
was  at  neither  of  these  objects  that  Job  Love  stared, 
as  he  tilted  back  his  chair  and  waved  impatiently 
aside  the  deprecatory  old  man. 

Stretched  on  a  ragged  horse-blanket  upon  the  floor 
lay  a  sleeping  child.  Clothed  in  little  else  than  a 
Hnen  bodice  and  a  short  flannel  petticoat,  she  turned 
restlessly  in  her  slumber  under  Mr.  Love's  scrutiny, 
and  crossing  one  bare  leg  over  the  other,  flung  out 


654  WOOD  AND   STONE 

a  long  white  arm,  while  her  dark  curls,  disturbed  by 
her  movement,  fell  over  her  face  and  hid  it  from 
view. 

"Ah!"  remarked  Mr.  Love.  "Quieter  now,  I  see. 
She  must  dance  today.  Flick,  and  no  mistake  about  it! 
You  must  take  her  out  in  the  fields  this  morning, 
like  you  did  that  other  one.  I  can't  have  no  more 
rampaging  and  such-like,  in  my  decent  circus.  But 
she  must  dance,  there's  no  getting  over  that,  —  she 
must  dance,  Old  Flick!  'Twas  your  own  blighting 
notion  to  take  her  on,  remember;  and  I  can't  have  no 
do-nothing  foreigners  hanging  around,  specially  now 
August  be  come. 

"What  did  she  say  her  nonsense-name  was?    Lores, 

—  Dolores?  Whoever  heard  tell  of  such  a  name  as 
that?" 

The  sound  of  his  voice  seemed  to  reach  the  child 
even  in  her  sleep;  for  flinging  her  arms  over  her  head, 
and  turning  on  her  back,  she  uttered  a  low  indis- 
tinguishable murmur.  Her  eyes,  however,  remained 
closed,  the  dark  curves  of  her  long  eye-lashes  contrast- 
ing with  the  scarlet  of  her  mouth  and  the  ivory 
pallor  of  her  skin. 

Even  Job  Love  —  though  not  precisely  an  aesthete 

—  was  struck  by  the  girl's  beauty. 

"She'll  make  a  fine  dancer.  Flick,  a  fine  dancer! 
How  old  dost  think  she  be?  'Bout  twelve,  or  may-be 
more,  I  reckon. 

"  'Tis  pity  she  won't  speak  no  Christian  word.  'Tis 
wonderful,  how  these  foreign  childer  do  hold  so 
obstinate  by  their  darned  fancy-tongue! 

"We  must  trim  her  out  in  them  spangle-gauzes  of 
Skipsy  Jane.     She  were  the  sort  of  girl  to  make  the 


METAMORPHOSIS  G55 

boys  holler.  But  this  one'll  do  well  enough,  I  reckon, 
if  so  be  she  goes  smilin'  and  chaffin'  upon  the  boards. 

"But  no  more  of  that  devil's  foolery.  Flick?  Dost 
hear,  man?  Take  her  out  into  the  fields;  —  take  her 
out  into  the  fields!  She  must  dance  and  she  must 
smile,  all  in  Skipsy  Jane's  spangles,  come  noon  this 
day.     She  must  do  so,  Flick  —  or  I  ain't  Jobie  Love!" 

The  old  man  paused  in  his  vague  moth-like  hover- 
ing, and  surveyed  the  outstretched  figure.  His  own 
appearance  was  curious  enough  to  excite  a  thrill  of 
intense  curiosity,  had  any  less  callous  eye  but  that  of 
his  master  been  cast  upon  him. 

He  produced  the  effect  not  so  much  of  a  living 
person,  animated  by  natural  impulses,  as  of  a  dead 
body  possessed  by  some  sort  of  wandering  spirit 
which  made  use  of  him  for  its  own  purposes. 

If  by  chance  this  spirit  were  to  desert  him,  one 
felt  that  what  would  be  left  of  Old  Flick  would  be 
nothing  but  the  mask  of  a  man, —  a  husk,  a  shard,  a 
withered  stalk,  a  wisp  of  dried-up  grass!  The  old 
creature  was  as  thin  as  a  lathe;  and  his  cavernous, 
colourless  eyes  and  drooping  jaw  looked,  in  that 
indistinct  light,  as  vague  and  shadowy  as  though  they 
belonged  to  some  phantasmal  mirage  of  mist  and 
rain  drifted  in  from  the  sleeping  fields. 

"How  did  'ee  ever  get  Mother  Sterner  to  let  'ee 
have  so  dainty  a  bit  of  goods?"  went  on  Mr.  Love, 
continuing  his  survey  of  their  unconscious  captive. 
"The  old  woman  must  have  been  blind-scared  of  the 
police  or  summat,  so  as  to  want  to  be  free  of  the 
maid.  'Tisn't  every  day  you  can  pick  up  a  lass  so 
cut  out  for  the  boards  as  she  be." 

At    intervals    during    his    master's    discourse    the 


656  WOOD  AND   STONE  ^ 

parchment-like  visage  of  the  old  man  twisted  and 
contorted  itself,  as  if  with  the  difficulty  of  finding 
words. 

When  Job  Love  at  last  became  silent,  the  words 
issued  from  him  as  if  they  had  been  rustling  eddies  of 
chaff,  blown  through  dried  stalks.  | 

"I've  tried  her  with  one  thing,  Mister,  and  I've 
tried  her  with  another, —  but  'tis  no  use;  she  do  cry 
and  cry,  and  there's  no  handling  her.  I  guess  I  must 
take  her  into  them  fields,  as  you  do  say,  'Tis  because 
of  folks  hearing  that  she  do  carry  on  so." 

Job  Love  frowned  and  scratched  his  forehead. 

"Damn  her,"  he  cried,  "for  a  limpsy  cat!  Well  — 
Old  Flick  —  ye  picked  her  up  and  ye  must  start  her 
off.  This  show  don't  begin  till  nigh  along  noon,  — 
so  if  ye  thinks  ye  can  bring  her  to  reason,  some  ways 
or  'tother  ways,  off  with  'ee,  my  man!  Get  her  a 
bite  of  breakfast  first,  —  and  good  luck  to  'ee!  Only 
don't  lets  have  no  fuss,  and  don't  let's  have  no 
onlookers.  I'm  not  the  man  to  stand  for  any  law- 
breaking.  This  show's  a  decent  show,  and  Job 
Love's  a  decent  man.  If  the  wench  makes  trouble, 
ye  must  take  her  back  where  she  did  come  from. 
Mother  Sterner'll  have  to  slide  down.  I  can't  have 
no  quarrels  with  King  and  Country,  over  a  limpsy 
maid  like  she!" 

Uttering  these  words  in  a  tone  of  formidable 
finality,  Mr.  Love  moved  to  the  entrance  and  let 
himself  out. 

Their  master  gone,  Old  Flick  turned  waveringly  to 
the  figure  on  the  floor.  Taking  down  a  faded  coat 
from  its  peg  on  the  wall,  he  carefully  spread  it  over 
the  child,  tucking  it  round    her  body   with  shaking 


METAMORPHOSIS  657 

hands.  He  then  went  to  the  stove  in  the  corner,  lit 
it,  and  arranged  the  kettle.  From  the  stove  he 
turned  to  the  three-legged  table;  and  removing  from 
a  hanging  cupboard  a  tea-pot,  some  cups  and  plates, 
a  loaf  of  bread  and  a  pat  of  butter,  he  set  out  these 
objects  with  meticulous  nicety,  avoiding  the  least 
clatter  or  sound.  This  done,  he  sat  down  upon  the 
solitary  chair,  and  waited  the  boiling  of  the  water  with 
inscrutable  passivity. 

■  From  outside  the  caravan  came  the  shuffle  of 
stirring  feet  and  the  murmur  of  subdued  and  drowsy 
voices.  The  camp  was  beginning  to  enter  upon  its 
labour  of  preparation. 

When  he  had  made  tea.  Old  Flick  touched  his 
sleeping  captive  lightly  on  the  shoulder. 

The  girl  started  violently,  and  sat  up,  with  wide- 
open  eyes.  She  began  talking  hurriedly,  protesting 
and  imploring;  but  not  a  word  of  her  speech  was 
intelligible  to  Old  Flick,  for  the  simple  reason  that  it 
was  Italian,  —  Italian  of  the  Neapolitan  inflexion. 

The  old  man  handed  her  a  strong  cup  of  tea,  to- 
gether with  a  large  slice  of  bread-and-butter,  uttering 
as  he  did  so  all  manner  of  soothing  and  reassuring 
words.  When  she  had  finished  her  breakfast  he 
brought  her  water  and  soap. 

"Tidy  thee-self  up,  my  pretty,"  he  said.  "We  be 
goin'  out,  along  into  them  fields,  present." 

Bolting  the  caravan  door  on  the  outside,  he  shuffled 
off  to  the  fountain  to  perform  his  own  ablutions,  and 
to  assist  his  companions  in  unloading  the  stage- 
properties,  and  setting  up  the  booths  and  swings. 
After  the  lapse  of  an  hour  he  climbed  the  caravan- 
steps  and  re-entered  softly. 


658  AVOOD   AND   STONE 

He  found  the  girl  crouched  in  a  corner,  her  hands 
clasped  over  her  knees,  and  traces  of  tears  upon  her 
cheeks.  Before  leaving  her,  the  old  man  had  placed 
shoes  and  stockings  by  her  side,  and  these  she  now 
wore,  together  with  a  dark-coloured  skirt  and  a  scarlet 
gipsy-shawl. 

"Come,"  he  said.     "Thee  be  goin'  wi'  I  into  the 
fields.     Thee  be  goin'  to  learn  a  dancin'  trick  or  two. 
Show  opens  along  of  noon;  and  Master,  he's  goin'  to    | 
let  'ee  have  Skipsy  Jane's  spangles." 

How  much  of  this  the  child  understood  it  is  im- 
possible to  say;  but  the  old  man's  tone  was  not 
threatening,  and  the  idea  of  being  taken  away  — 
somewhere  —  anywhere  —  roused  vague  hopes  in  her 
soul.  She  pulled  the  red  shawl  over  her  head  and 
let  him  lead  her  by  the  hand. 

Down    the    steps    they    clambered,    and    hurriedly  _ 
threaded  their  way  across  the  square. 

The  old  man  took  the  road  towards  Yeoborough, 
and  turned  with  the  girl  up  Dead  Man's  Lane.  He 
was  but  dimly  acquainted  with  the  neighbourhood; 
but  once  before,  in  his  wanderings  as  a  pedler,  he  had 
encamped  in  a  certain  grassy  hollow  bordering  on  the 
Auber  Woods,  and  the  memory  of  the  seclusion  of 
this  spot  drew  him  now. 

As  they  passed  Mr.  Quincunx's  garden  they  en- 
countered the  solitary  himself,  who,  in  his  sympathy 
with  Luke  Andersen  on  this  particular  day,  had 
resolved  to  pay  the  young  man  an  early  morning 
visit. 

The    recluse    looked    with    extreme    and    startled ' 
interest    at    this    singular    pair.     The    child's    beauty 
struck  him  with  a  shock  that  almost  took  his  breath 


METAMORPHOSIS 659 

away.  There  was  something  about  the  haunting 
expression  of  her  gaze  as  she  turned  it  upon  him  that 
roused  an  overpowering  flood  of  tenderness  and  pity- 
in  untouched  abysses  of  his  being. 

There  must  have  been  some  instantaneous  reciproc- 
ity in  the  eccentric  man's  grey  eyes,  for  the  young 
girl  turned  back  after  they  had  passed,  and  throwing 
the  shawl  away  from  her  head,  fixed  upon  him  what 
seemed  a  deliberate  and  beseeching  look  of  ap- 
peal. 

Mr.  Quincunx  was  so  completely  carried  out  of  his 
normal  self  by  this  imploring  look  that  he  went  so 
far  as  to  answer  its  inarticulate  prayer  by  a  wave  of 
his  hand,  and  by  a  sign  that  indicated,  —  whether 
she  understood  it  or  not,  —  that  he  intended  to  render 
her  assistance. 

In  his  relations  with  Lacrima  Mr,  Quincunx  was 
always  remotely  conscious  that  the  girl's  character 
was  stronger  than  his  own,  and  —  Pariah-like  —  this 
had  the  effect  of  lessening  the  emotion  he  felt  towards 
her. 

But  now  —  in  the  look  of  the  little  Dolores  —  there 
was  an  appeal  from  a  weakness  and  helplessness  much 
more  desperate  than  his  own,  —  an  appeal  to  him  from 
the  deepest  gulfs  of  human  dependence.  The  glance 
she  had  given  him  burned  in  his  brain  like  a  coal  of 
white  fire.  It  seemed  to  cry  out  to  him  from  all  the 
flotsam  and  jetsam,  all  the  drift  and  wreckage  of 
everything  that  had  ever  been  drowned,  submerged, 
and  stranded,  by  the  pitilessness  of  Life,  since  the 
foundation  of  the  world. 

The  child's  look  had  indeed  the  same  effect  upon 
Mr.  Quincunx  that  the  look  of  his  Master  had  upon 


660  WOOD   AND   STOXE 

the  fear-stricken  Apostle,  in  the  hall  of  Caiaphas  the 
high  priest.  In  one  heart-piercing  stab  it  brought  to 
his  overpowered  consciousness  a  vision  of  all  the 
victims  of  cruelty  who  had  ever  cried  aloud  for  help 
since  the  generations  of  men  began  their  tragic 
journey. 

Perhaps  to  all  extremely  sensitive  natures  of  Mr. 
Quincunx's  type,  a  type  of  morbidly  self-conscious 
weakness  as  well  as  sensitiveness,  the  electric  stir 
produced  by  beauty  and  sex  can  only  reach  a  culmina- 
tion when  the  medium  of  its  appearance  approximates 
to  the  extreme  limit  of  fragility  and  helpless- 
ness. 

Hell  itself,  so  to  speak,  had  to  display  to  him  its 
span-long  babes,  before  he  could  be  aroused  to  de- 
scend and  "harrow"  it!  But  once  roused  in  him,  this 
latent  spirit  of  the  pitiful  Son  of  Man  became  formi- 
dable, reckless,  irresistible.  The  very  absence  in  him 
of  the  usual  weight  of  human  solidity  and  "character" 
made  him  the  more  porous  to  this  divine  mood. 

Anyone  who  watched  him  returning  hastily  to  his 
cottage  from  the  garden-gate  would  have  been  amazed 
by  the  change  in  his  countenance.  He  looked  and 
moved  like  a  man  under  a  blinding  illumination.  So 
must  the  citizen  of  Tarsus  have  looked,  when  he 
staggered  into  the  streets  of  Damascus. 

He  literally  ran  into  his  kitchen,  snatched  up  his 
hat  and  stick,  poured  a  glass  of  milk  down  his  throat, 
put  a  couple  of  biscuits  into  his  pocket,  and  re-issued, 
ready  for  his  strange  pursuit.  He  hurried  up  the 
lane  to  the  first  gate  that  offered  itself,  and  passing 
into  the  field  continued  the  chase  on  the  further  side 
of  the  hedge. 


METAIVIORPHOSTS  66 1 

The  old  man  evidently  found  the  hill  something 
of  an  effort,  for  it  was  not  long  before  Mr.  Quincunx 
overtook  them. 

He  passed  them  by  unremarked,  and  continued  his 
advance  along  the  hedgerow  till  he  reached  the 
summit  of  the  ridge  between  Wild  Pine  and  Seven 
Ashes.  Here,  concealed  behind  a  clump  of  larches, 
he  awaited  their  approach.  To  his  surprise,  they 
entered  one  of  the  fields  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
road,  and  began  walking  across  it. 

Mr.  Quincunx  watched  them.  In  a  corner  of  the 
field  they  were  crossing  lay  a  spacious  hollow,  —  once 
the  bed  of  a  pond,  —  but  now  quite  dry  and  over- 
grown with  moss  and  clover. 

Old  Flick's  instinct  led  him  to  this  spot,  as  one 
well  adapted  to  the  purpose  he  had  in  mind,  both  by 
reason  of  its  absolute  seclusion  and  by  reason  of  its 
smooth  turf-floor. 

Mr.  Quincunx  waited  till  their  two  figures  vanished 
into  this  declivity,  and  then  he  himself  crossed  the 
field  in  their  track. 

Having  reached  the  mossy  level  of  the  vanished 
pond, — a  place  which  seemed  as  though  Nature  her- 
self had  designed  it  with  a  view  to  his  present  inten- 
tion,—  Old  Flick  assumed  a  less  friendly  air  towards 
his  captive.  A  psychologist  interested  in  searching 
out  the  obscure  workings  of  derelict  and  submerged 
souls,  would  have  come  to  the  speedy  conclusion  as 
he  watched  the  old  man's  cadaverous  face  that  the 
spirit  which  at  present  animated  his  corpse-like  body 
was  one  that  had  little  commiseration  or  compunction 
in  it. 

The  young  Dolores  had  not,  it  seemed,  to  deal  at 


662  WOOD   AND   STOXE 

this  moment  with  an  ordinary  human  scoundrel,  but 
with  a  faded  image  of  humanity  galvanized  into  life 
by  some  conscienceless  Larva. 

In  proportion  as  this  unearthly  obsession  grew  upon 
Old  Flick,  his  natural  countenance  grew  more  and 
more  dilapidated  and  withered.  Innumerable  years 
seemed  suddenly  added  to  the  burden  he  already 
carried.  The  lines  of  his  face  assumed  a  hideous  and 
Egyptian  immobility;  only  his  eyes,  as  he  turned  them 
upon  his  companion,  were  no  longer  colourless. 

"Doll,"  said  he,  "now  thee  must  try  thee's  steps, 
or  'twill  be  the  worse  for  thee!" 

The  girl  only  answered  by  flinging  herself  down  on 
her  knees  before  him,  and  pouring  forth  unintelligible 
supplications. 

"No  more  o'  this,"  cried  the  old  man;  "no  more  o' 
this !  I've  got  to  learn  'ee  to  dance,  —  and  learn  'ee 
to  dance  I  will.  Ye'll  have  to  go  on  them  boards 
come  noon,  whether  'ee  will  or  no!" 

The  child  only  clasped  her  hands  more  tightly 
together,  and  renewed  her  pleading. 

It  would  have  needed  the  genius  of  some  supreme 
painter,  and  of  such  a  painter  in  an  hour  of  sheer 
insanity,  to  have  done  justice  to  the  extraordinary 
expression  that  crossed  the  countenance  of  Old  Flick 
at  that  moment.  The  outlines  of  his  face  seemed  to 
waver  and  decompose.  None  but  an  artist  who  had, 
like  the  insatiable  Leonardo,  followed  the  very  dead 
into  their  forlorn  dissolution,  could  have  indicated 
the  setting  of  his  eyes;  and  his  eyes  themselves, 
madness  alone  could  have  depicted. 

With  a  sudden  vicious  jerk  the  old  man  snatched 
the  shawl  from   the  girl's  shoulders,  flung  it  on  the 


METAMORPHOSIS  663 

ground,  and  seizing  her  by  the  wrists  pulled  her  up 
upon  her  feet. 

"Dance,  ye  baggage!"  he  cried  hoarsely;  —  "dance, 
I  tell  'ee!" 

It  was  plain  that  the  luckless  waif  understood 
clearly  enough  now  what  was  required  of  her,  and  it 
was  also  plain  that  she  recognized  that  the  moment 
for  supplication  had  gone  by.  She  stepped  back  a 
pace  or  two  upon  the  smooth  turf,  and  slipping  off 
her  unlaced  shoes,  —  shoes  far  too  large  for  her  small 
feet,  —  she  passed  the  back  of  her  hand  quickly 
across  her  eyes,  shook  her  hair  away  from  her  fore- 
head, and  began  a  slow,  pathetic  little  dance. 

"Higher!"  cried  Old  Flick  in  an  excited  voice, 
beating  the  air  with  his  hand  and  humming  a  strange 
snatch  of  a  tune  that  might  have  inspired  the  dances 
of  Polynesian  cannibals.     "Higher,  I  tell  'ee  " 

The  girl  felt  compelled  to  obey;  and  putting  one 
hand  on  her  hip  and  lifting  up  her  skirt  with  the 
other,  she  proceeded,  shyly  and  in  forlorn  silence,  to 
dance  an  old  Neapolitan  folk-dance,  such  as  might  be 
witnessed,  on  any  summer  evening,  by  the  shores  of 
Amalfi  or  Sorrento. 

It  was  at  this  moment  that  Mr.  Quincunx  made  his 
appearance  against  the  sky-line  above  them.  He 
looked  for  one  brief  second  at  the  girl's  bare  arms, 
waving  curls,  and  light-swinging  body,  and  then  leapt 
down  between  them. 

,  All  nervousness,  all  timidity,  seemed  to  have  fallen 
away  from  him  like  a  snake's  winter-skin  under  the 
spring  sun.  He  seized  the  child's  hand  with  an  air 
of  indescribable  gentleness  and  authority,  and  made 
so    menacing    and    threatening    a    gesture    that    Old 


664  WOOD   AND   STONE 

Flick,  staggering  backwards,  nearly  fell  to  the 
ground. 

"Whose  child  is  this?"  he  demanded  sternly, 
soothing  the  frightened  little  dancer  with  one  hand, 
while  with  the  other  he  shook  his  cane  in  the  direction 
of  the  gasping  and  protesting  old  man. 

"Whose  child  is  this.'*  You've  stolen  her,  you  old 
rascal!  You're  no  Italian,  —  anyone  can  see  that! 
You're  a  damned  old  tramp,  and  if  you  weren't  so 
old  and  ugly  I'd  beat  you  to  death;  do  you  hear?  — 
to  death,  you  villain!  Whose  child  is  she?  Can't 
you  speak?  Take  care;  I'm  badly  tempted  to  make 
you  taste  this,  —  to  make  you  skip  and  dance  a  little! 

"What  do  you  say?  Job  Love's  circus?  Well, — 
he's  not  an  Italian  either,  is  he?  So  if  you  haven't 
stolen  her,  he  has." 

He  turned  to  the  child,  stooping  over  her  with 
infinite  tenderness,  and  folding  the  shaw^l  of  which  she 
had  again  possessed  herself,  with  hands  as  gentle  as  a 
mother's,  about  her  shoulders  and  head. 

"Where  are  your  parents,  my  darling?"  he  asked, 
adding  with  a  flash  of  amazing  presence  of  mind,  — 
"your  'padre'  and  'madre'?" 

The  girl  seemed  to  get  the  drift  of  the  question,  and 
with  a  pitiful  little  smile  pointed  earth-ward,  and 
made  a  sweeping  gesture  with  both  her  hands,  as  if 
to  indicate  the  passing  of  death's  wings. 

"Dead?  — both  dead,  eh?"  muttered  Mr.  Quin- 
cunx. "And  these  rascals  who've  got  hold  of  you 
are  villains  and  rogues?  Damned  rogues!  Damned 
villains!" 

He  paused  and  muttered  to  himself.  "What  the 
devil's    the    Italian    for    a     god-forsaken     rascal?  — 


METAINIORPIIOSIS  665 

'Cattivo!'  *Tutto  cattivo!'  —  the  whole  lot  of 
them  a  set  of  confounded  scamps!" 

The  child  nodded  her  head  vigorously. 

"You  see,"  he  cried,  turning  to  Old  Flick,  "she 
disowns  you  all.  This  is  clearly  a  most  knavish 
piece  of  work!  What  were  you  doing  to  the  child? 
eh.'*  eh?  eh?"  Mr.  Quincunx  accompanied  these  final 
syllables  with  renewed  flourishes  of  his  stick  in  the  air. 

Old  Flick  retreated  still  further  away,  his  legs 
shaking  under  him.  "Here,  —  you  can  clear  out  of 
this!  Do  you  understand?  You  can  clear  out  of 
this;  and  go  back  to  your  damned  master,  and  tell 
him  I'm  going  to  send  the  police  after  him! 

"As  for  this  girl,  I'm  going  to  take  her  home  with 
me.  So  off  you  go,  — you  old  reprobate;  and  thank- 
ful you  may  be  that  I  haven't  broken  every  bone  in 
your  body!  I've  a  great  mind  to  do  it  now.  Upon 
my  soul  I've  a  great  mind  to  do  it! 

"Shall  I  beat  him  into  a  jelly  for  you,  —  my  darling? 
Shall  I  make  him  skip  and  dance  for  you?" 

The  child  seemed  to  understand  his  gestures,  if  not 
his  words;  for  she  clung  passionately  to  his  hands,  and 
pressing  them  to  her  lips,  covered  them  with  kisses; 
shaking  her  head  at  the  same  time,  as  much  as  to 
say,  "Old  Flick  is  nothing.  Let  Old  Flick  go  to  the 
devil,  as  long  as  I  can  stay  with  you!"  In  some  such 
manner  as  this,  at  any  rate,  Mr.  Quincunx  interpreted 
her  words. 

"Sheer  off,  then,  you  old  scoundrel!  Shog  off  back 
to  your  confounded  circus!  And  when  you've  got 
there,  tell  your  friends,  —  Job  Love  and  his  gang,  — 
that  if  they  want  this  little  one  they'd  better  come 
and  fetch  her! 


666  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"Dead  Man's  Lane, — that's  where  I  hve.  It's 
easily  enough  found;  and  so  is  the  police-station  in 
Yeoborough,  —  as  you  and  your  damned  kidnappers 
shall  discover  before  you've  done  with  me!" 

Uttering  these  words  in  a  voice  so  menacing  that 
the  old  man  shook  like  an  aspen-leaf,  Mr.  Quincunx 
took  the  girl  by  the  hand,  and,  ascending  the  grassy 
slope,  walked  off  with  her  across  the  field. 

Old  Flick  seemed  reduced  to  a  condition  border- 
ing upon  imbecility.  He  staggered  up  out  of  that 
unpropitious  hollow,  and  stood  stock-still,  like  one 
petrified,  until  they  were  out  of  sight.  Then,  very 
slowly  and  mumbling  incoherently  to  himself,  he  made 
his  way  back  towards  the  village. 

He  did  not  even  turn  his  head  as  he  passed  Mr. 
Quincunx's  cottage.  Indeed,  it  is  extremely  doubtful 
how  far  he  had  recognized  him  as  the  person  they 
encountered  on  their  way,  and  still  more  doubtful 
how  far  he  had  heard  or  understood,  when  the  tenant 
of  Dead  Man's  Lane  indicated  the  place  of  his  abode. 

The  sudden  transformation  of  the  timid  recluse 
into  a  formidable  man  of  action  did  not  end  with  his 
triumphant  retirement  to  his  familiar  domain.  Some 
mysterious  fibre  in  his  complicated  temperament  had 
been  struck,  and  continued  to  be  struck,  by  the  little 
Dolores,  which  not  only  rendered  him  indifferent  to 
personal  danger,  but  willing  and  happy  to  encoun- 
ter it. 

The  event  only  added  one  more  proof  to  the  sage 
dictum  of  the  Chinese  philosopher,  —  that  you  can 
never  tell  of  what  a  man  is  capable  until  he  is  stone- 
dead. 


CHAPTER   XXVI 
VARIOUS  ENCOUNTERS 

DURING  the  hours  when  Mr.  Quincunx  was 
undergoing  this  strange  experience,  several 
other  human  brains  under  the  roofs  of  Nevil- 
ton  were  feeling  the  pressure  of  extreme  perturbation. 

Gladys,  after  a  gloomy  breakfast,  which  was 
rendered  more  uncomfortable,  not  only  by  her  father's 
chaffing  references  to  the  approaching  ceremony, 
but  by  a  letter  from  Dangelis,  had  escaped  to  her 
room  to  be  assisted  by  Lacrima  in  dressing  for  the 
confirmation. 

In  his  letter  the  artist  declared  his  intention  of 
spending  that  night  at  the  Gloucester  Hotel  in  Wey- 
mouth, and  begged  his  betrothed  to  forgive  this  delay 
in  his  return  to  her  side. 

This  communication  caused  Gladys  many  tremors 
of  disquietude.  Could  it  be  possible  that  the  Ameri- 
can had  found  out  something  and  that  he  had  gone 
to  Weymouth  to  meditate  at  leisure  upon  his  course 
of  action? 

In  any  case  this  intimation  of  a  delay  in  his  return 
irritated  the  girl.  It  struck  her  in  her  tenderest  spot. 
It  was  a  direct  flouting  of  her  magnetic  power.  It 
was  an  insult  to  her  sex-vanity. 

She  had  seen  nothing  of  Luke  since  their  Sunday's 
excursion;  and  as  Lacrima,  with  cold  submissive 
fingers,  helped    her   to    arrange    her    white   dress   and 


068  WOOD   AND   STONE 

virginal  veil,  she  could  hear  the  sound  of  the  bell 
tolling  for  James  Andersen's  funeral. 

Mingled  curiously  enough  with  this  melancholy- 
vibration  falling  at  protracted  intervals  upon  the  air, 
like  the  stroke  of  some  reiterated  hammer  of  doom, 
came  another  sound,  a  sound  of  a  completely  oppo- 
site character,  —  the  preluding  strains,  namely,  of  the 
steam  roundabouts  of  Porter's  Universal  Show. 

It  was  as  though  on  one  side  of  the  village  the 
angel  of  death  were  striking  an  iron-threatening  gong, 
while,  on  the  other  side,  the  demons  of  life  were 
howling  a  brazen  defiance. 

The  association  of  the  two  sounds  as  they  reached 
her  at  this  critical  hour  brought  the  figure  of  Luke 
vividly  and  obsessingly  into  her  mind.  How  well  she 
knew  the  sort  of  comment  he  would  make  upon  the 
bizarre  combination!  Beneath  the  muslin  frills  of 
her  virginal  dress,  —  a  dress  that  made  her  look  fairer 
and  younger  than  usual,  —  her  heart  ached  with  sick 
longing  for  her  evasive  lover. 

The  wheel  had  indeed  come  full  circle  for  the  fair- 
haired  girl.  She  could  not  help  the  thought  recurring 
again  and  again,  as  Lacrima's  light  fingers  adjusted 
her  veil,  that  the  next  time  she  dressed  in  this  manner 
it  would  be  for  her  wedding-day.  Her  one  profound 
consolation  lay  in  the  knowledge  that  her  cousin, 
even  more  deeply  than  herself,  dreaded  the  approach 
of  that  fatal  Thursday, 

Her  hatred  for  the  pale-cheeked  Italian  re-accumu- 
lated every  drop  of  its  former  venom,  as  with  an  air 
of  aff'ectionate  gratitude  she  accepted  her  assistance. 

It  is  a  psychological  peculiarity  of  certain  human 
beings  that  the  more  they  hate,  the  more  they  crave, 


VARIOUS  ENCOUNTERS  669 

with  a  curious  perverted  instinct,  some  sort  of  physical 
contact  with  the  object  of  their  hatred. 

Every  touch  of  Lacrima's  hand  increased  the 
intensity  of  Gladys'  loathing;  and  yet,  so  powerful  is 
the  instinct  to  which  I  refer,  she  lost  no  opportunity 
of  accentuating  the  contact  between  them,  letting 
their  fingers  meet  again  and  again,  and  even  their 
breath,  and  throwing  back  her  rounded  chin  to  make 
it  easier  for  those  hated  wrists  to  busy  themselves 
about  her  throat.  Her  general  air  was  an  air  of 
playful  passivity;  but  at  one  moment,  imprinting  a  kiss 
on  the  girl's  arm  as,  in  the  process  of  arranging  her 
veil,  it  brushed  across  her  cheek,  she  seemed  almost 
anxious  to  convey  to  Lacrima  the  full  implication  of 
her  real  feeling. 

Never  has  a  human  caress  been  so  electric  with  the 
vibrations  of  antipathy,  as  was  that  kiss.  She  fol- 
lowed up  this  signal  of  animosity  by  a  series  of  feline 
taunts  relative  to  John  Goring,  one  of  which,  from 
its  illuminated  insight  into  the  complex  strata  of  the 
girl's  soul,  delighted  her  by  its  effect. 

Lacrima  winced  under  it,  as  if  under  the  sting  of  a 
lash,  and  a  burning  flood  of  scarlet  suffused  her 
cheeks.  She  dropped  her  hands  and  stepped  back, 
uttering  a  fierce  vow  that  nothing  —  nothing  on 
earth  —  would  induce  her  to  accompany  a  girl  who 
could  say  such  things,  to  such  a  ceremony! 

"No,  I  wouldn't, —  I  wouldn't!"  cried  Gladys 
mockingly.  "I  wouldn't  dream  of  coming  with  me! 
Tomorrow  week,  anyway,  we're  bound  to  go  to  church 
side  by  side.  Father  wanted  to  drive  with  me  then, 
you  know,  and  to  let  mother  go  with  you,  —  but  I 
wouldn't  hear  of    it!     I    said    they   must  go   in  one 


670  WOOD  AND   STONE 

carriage,  and  you  and  I  in  another,  so  that  our  last 
drive  together  we  should  be  quite  by  ourselves. 
You'll  like  that,  won't  you,  darling?" 

Lacrima's  only  answer  to  this  was  to  turn  her  back 
to  her  cousin,  and  begin  putting  on  her  hat  and 
gloves. 

"I  know  where  you're  going,"  said  Gladys.  "You're 
going  to  see  your  dear  Maurice.  Give  him  my  love! 
I  should  be  ashamed  to  let  such  a  wretched  coward 
come  near  me. 

"James — poor  boy! — was  a  fellow  of  a  different 
metal.  He'd  some  spirit  in  him.  Listen!  When  that 
bell  stops  tolling  they'll  be  carrying  him  into  the 
church.  I  expect  you're  thinking  now,  darling,  that 
it  would  have  been  better  if  you'd  treated  him 
differently.  Of  course  you  know  it's  you  that  killed 
him.?  Oh,  nobody  else!  Just  little  Lacrima  and  her 
coy,  demure  ways! 

"Fve  never  killed  a  man.  I  can  say  that,  at  all 
events. 

"That's  right!  Run  off  to  her  dear  Maurice,  — 
her  dear  brave  Maurice!  Perhaps  he'll  take  her  on 
his  knees  again,  and  she'll  play  the  sweet  little  inno- 
cent, —  like  that  day  when  I  peeped  through  the 
window!" 

This  final  dart  had  hardly  reached  its  objective 
before  Lacrima  without  attempting  any  retort  rushed 
from  the  room. 

"I  will  go  and  see  Maurice.  I  will!  I  will!"  she 
murmured  to  herself  as  she  ran  down  the  broad  oak 
stair-case,  and  slipped  out  by  the  East  door. 

Simultaneously  with  these  events,  a  scene  of  equal 
dramatic  intensity,  though  of  a  very  different  charac- 


VARIOUS   ENCOUNTERS  671 


ter,  was  being  enacted  in  the  vicarage  drawing-room. 
Vennie,  as  we  have  noted,  had  resolved  to  postpone 
for  the  present  her  reception  into  the  Catholic  Church. 
She  had  also  resolved  that  nothing  on  earth  should 
induce   her   to   reveal   to   her   mother   her   change   of 
creed  until  the  thing  was  an  accomplished  fact.     The 
worst,  however,  of  the  kind  of  mental  suppression  in 
which  she  had  been  living  of  late,  is  that  it  tends  to 
produce  a  volcanic  excitement  of  the  nerves,  liable  at 
any  moment  to  ungovernable  upheavals.     Quite  little 
things  —  mere  straws  and  bagatelles  —  are  enough  to 
set  this  eruption  beginning;    and  when  once  it  begins, 
the  accumulated  passion  of  the  long  days  of  fermenta- 
tion gives  the  explosion  a  horrible  force. 

One  perpetual  annoyance  to  Vennie  was  her 
mother's  persistent  fondness  for  family  prayers.  It 
seemed  to  the  girl  as  though  Valentia  insisted  on  this 
performance,  not  so  much  out  of  a  desire  to  serve 
God,  as  out  of  a  sense  of  what  was  due  to  herself  as 
the  mistress  of  a  well-conducted  establishment. 

Vennie  always  fancied  she  discerned  a  peculiar 
tone  of  self-satisfaction  in  her  mother's  voice,  as, 
rather  loudly,  and  extremely  clearly,  she  read  her 
liturgical  selections  to  the  assembled  servants. 

On  this  particular  morning  the  girl  had  avoided 
the  performance  of  this  rite,  by  leaving  her  room 
earlier  than  usual  and  taking  refuge  in  the  furthest 
of  the  vicarage  orchards.  Backwards  and  forwards 
she  walked,  in  that  secluded  place,  with  her  hands 
behind  her  and  her  head  bent,  heedless  of  the  drench- 
ing dew  which  covered  every  grass-blade  and  of  the 
heavy  white  mists  that  still  hung  about  the  tree- 
trunks.     She  was  obliged  to  return  to  her  room  and 


672  WOOD   AND   STONE 

change  her  shoes  and  stockings  before  joining  her 
mother  at  breakfast,  but  not  before  she  had  prayed 
a  desperate  prayer,  down  there  among  the  misty  trees, 
for  the  eternal  rest  of  James  Andersen's  soul. 

This  little  incident  of  her  absence  from  prayers 
was  the  direct  cause  of  the  unfortunate  scene  that 
followed. 

Valentia  hardly  spoke  to  her  daughter  while  the 
meal  proceeded,  and  when  at  last  it  was  over,  she 
retired  to  the  drawing-room  and  began  writing  letters. 

This  was  an  extremely  ill-omened  sign  to  anyone 
who  knew  Mrs.  Seldom's  habits.  Under  normal 
conditions,  her  first  proceeding  after  breakfast  was  to 
move  to  the  kitchen,  where  she  engaged  in  a  long 
culinary  debate  with  both  cook  and  gardener;  a  course 
of  action  which  was  extremely  essential,  as  without  it, 

—  so  bitter  was  the  feud  between  these  two  worthies, 

—  it  is  unlikely  that  there  would  have  been  any  vegeta- 
bles at  all,  either  for  lunch  or  dinner.  When  anything 
occurred  to  throw  her  into  a  mood  of  especially  good 
spirits,  she  would  pass  straight  out  of  the  French 
window  on  to  the  front  lawn,  and  armed  with  a  pair 
of  formidable  garden-scissors  would  make  a  selection 
of  flowers  and  leaves  appropriate  to  a  festival  temper. 

But  this  adjournment  at  so  early  an  hour  to  the 
task  of  letter-writing  indicated  that  Valentia  was  in  a 
condition  of  mind,  which  in  anyone  but  a  lady  of  her 
distinction  and  breeding  could  have  been  called  noth- 
ing less  than  a  furious  rage.  For  of  all  things  in  the 
world,  Mrs.  Seldom  most  detested  this  business  of 
writing  letters;  and  therefore,  —  with  that  perverse 
self-punishing  instinct,  which  is  one  of  the  most 
artful    weapons    of    offence    given    to    refined    gentle- 


VARIOUS  ENCOUNTERS  673 

women,  —  she  took  grim  satisfaction  in  setting  herself 
down  to  write;  thus  producing  chaos  in  the  kitchen, 
where  the  gardener  refused  to  obey  the  cook,  and 
miserable  remorse  in  the  heart  of  Vennie,  who  wan- 
dered up  and  down  the  lawn  meditating  a  penitential 
apology. 

Satisfied  in  her  heart  that  she  was  causing  universal 
annoyance  and  embarrassment  by  her  proceeding, 
and  yet  quite  confident  that  there  was  nothing  but 
what  was  proper  and  natural  in  her  writing  letters 
at  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning,  Valentia  began,  by 
gentle  degrees,  to  recover  her  lost  temper. 

The  only  real  sedative  to  thoroughly  aggravated 
nerves,  is  the  infliction  of  similar  aggravation  upon 
the  nerves  of  others.  This  process  is  like  the  laying 
on  of  healing  ointment;  and  the  more  extended  the 
disturbance  which  we  have  the  good  fortune  to  create, 
the  sooner  we  ourselves  recover  our  equanimity. 

Valentia  had  already  cast  several  longing  glances 
through  the  window  at  the  heavy  sunshine  falling 
mistily  on  the  asters  and  petunias,  and  in  another 
moment  she  would  probably  have  left  her  letter  and 
joined  her  daughter  in  the  garden,  had  not  Vennie 
anticipated  any  such  movement  by  entering  the  room 
herself. 

"I  ought  to  make  you  understand,  mother,"  the 
girl  began  as  soon  as  she  stepped  in,  speaking  in  that 
curious  strained  voice  which  people  assume  when  they 
have  worked  themselves  up  to  a  pitch  of  nervous 
excitement,  "that  when  I  don't  appear  at  prayers,  it 
isn't  because  I'm  in  a  sulky  temper,  or  in  any  mad 
haste  to  get  out  of  doors.  It's  —  it's  for  a  different 
reason." 


674  WOOD  AND   STONE 

Valentia  gazed  at  her  in  astonishment.  The  tone 
in  which  Vennie  spoke  was  so  tense,  her  eyes  shone 
with  such  a  strange  brilliance,  and  her  look  was  alto- 
gether so  abnormal,  that  Mrs.  Seldom  completely 
forget  her  injured  priestess- vanity,  and  waited  in 
sheer  maternal  alarm  for  the  completion  of  the  girl's 
announcement. 

"Its  because  I've  made  up  my  mind  to  become  a 
Catholic,  and  Catholics  aren't  allowed  to  attend  any 
other  kind  of  service  than  their  own." 

Valentia  rose  to  her  feet  and  looked  at  her  daughter 
in  blank  dismay.  Her  first  feeling  was  one  of  over- 
powering indignation  against  Mr.  Taxater,  to  whose 
treacherous  influence  she  felt  certain  this  madness 
was  mainly  due. 

There  was  a  terrible  pause  during  which  Vennie, 
leaning  against  the  back  of  a  chair,  was  conscious  that 
both  herself  and  her  mother  were  trembling  from 
head  to  foot.  The  soft  murmur  of  wood-pigeons 
wafted  in  from  the  window,  was  now  blended  with 
two  other  sounds,  the  sound  of  the  tolling  of  the 
church-bell  and  the  sound  of  the  music  of  Mr. 
Love's  circus,  testing  the  efficiency  of  its  round- 
abouts. 

"So  this  is  what  it  has  come  to,  is  it?"  said  the 
old  lady  at  last.  "And  I  suppose  the  next  thing 
you'll  tell  me,  in  this  unkind,  inconsiderate  way,  is 
that  you've  decided  to  become  a  nun!" 

Vennie  made  a  little  movement  with  her  head. 

"You    have?"    cried    Valentia,    pale    with    anger. 

"You  have  made  up  your  mind  to  do  that?     Well  — 

I  wouldn't  have  believed  it  of  you,  Vennie!     In  spite 

of  everything  I've  done  for  you;  in  spite  of  everything 


VARIOUS   ENCOUNTERS  675 

I've  taught  you;  in  spite  of  everything  I've  prayed 
for;  —  you  can  go  and  do  this!  Oh,  you're  an  unkind, 
ungrateful  girl!  But  I  know  that  look  on  your  face. 
I've  known  it  from  your  childhood.  When  you  look 
like  that  there's  no  hope  of  moving  you.  Go  on, 
then!  Do  as  you  wish  to  do.  Leave  your  mother  in 
her  old  age,  and  destroy  the  last  hope  of  our  family. 
I  won't  speak  another  word.  I  know  nothing  I  can 
say  will  change  you."  She  sank  down  upon  the 
chintz-covered  sofa  and  covered  her  face  with  her 
hands. 

Vennie  cursed  herself  for  her  miserable  want  of 
tact.  What  demon  was  it  that  had  tempted  her  to 
break  her  resolution?  Then,  suddenly,  as  she  looked 
at  her  mother  swaying  to  and  fro  on  the  couch,  a 
strange  impulse  of  hard  inflexible  obstinacy  rose  up 
in  her. 

These  wretched  human  affections,  —  so  unbalanced 
and  selfish,  —  what  a  relief  to  escape  from  them 
altogether!  Like  the  passing  on  its  way,  across  a 
temperate  ocean,  of  some  polar  iceberg,  there  drove, 
at  that  moment,  through  Vennie's  consciousness,  a 
wedge  of  frozen,  adamantine  contempt  for  all  these 
human,  too-human  clingings  and  clutchings  which 
would  fain  imprison  the  spirit  and  hold  it  down  with 
soft-strangling  hands. 

In  her  deepest  heart  she  turned  almost  savagely 
away  from  this  grey-haired  w^oman,  sitting  there  so 
hurt  in  her  earthly  affections  and  ambitions.  She 
uttered  a  fierce  mental  invocation  to  that  other 
Mother,  —  her  whose  heart,  pierced  by  seven  swords, 
had  submitted  to  God's  will  without  a  groan! 

Valentia,    who,   it    must    be    remembered,   had    not 


676  ^YOOD  AND   STONE 

only  married  a  Seldom,  but  was  herself  one  of  that 
breed,  felt  at  that  moment  as  though  this  girl  of 
hers  were  reverting  to  some  mad  strain  of  Pre-Eliza- 
bethan  fanaticism.  There  was  something  mediaeval 
about  Venule's  obstinacy,  as  there  was  something 
mediaeval  about  the  lines  of  her  face.  Valentia 
recalled  a  portrait  she  had  once  seen  of  an  ancestor 
of  theirs  in  the  days  before  the  Reformation.  He,  the 
great  Catholic  Baron,  had  possessed  the  same  thin 
profile  and  the  same  pinched  lips.  It  was  a  curious 
revenge,  the  poor  lady  thought,  for  those  evicted 
Cistercians,  out  of  whose  plundered  house  the  Nevil- 
ton  mansion  had  been  built,  that  this  fate,  of  all 
fates,  should  befall  the  last  of  the  Seldoms! 

The  tolling  of  the  bell,  which  hitherto  had  gone  on, 
monotonously  and  insistently,  across  the  drowsy 
lawn,  suddenly  stopped. 

Vennie  started  and  ran  hurriedly  to  the  door. 

"They  are  burying  James  Andersen,"  she  cried, 
"and  I  ought  to  be  there.  It  would  look  unkind  and 
thoughtless  of  me  not  to  be  there.  Good-bye,  mother! 
We'll  talk  of  this  when  I  come  back.  I'm  sorry  to 
be  so  unsatisfactory  a  daughter  to  you,  but  perhaps 
you'll  feel  differently  some  day." 

Left  to  herself,  Valentia  Seldom  rose  and  went  back 
to  her  letter.  But  the  pen  fell  from  her  limp  fingers, 
and  tears  stained  the  already  written  page. 

The  funeral  service  had  only  just  commenced  when 
Vennie  reached  the  churchyard.  She  remained  at  the 
extreme  outer  edge  of  the  crowd,  where  groups  of 
inquisitive  women  are  wont  to  cluster,  wearing  their 
aprons  and  carrying  their  babies,  and  where  the  bigger 
children  are  apt  to  be  noisy  and  troublesome.     She 


VARIOUS  ENCOUNTERS  677 

caught  a  glimpse  of  Ninsy  Lintot  among  those  stand- 
ing quite  close  to  where  Mr.  Clavering,  in  his  white 
surplice,  was  reading  the  pregnant  liturgical  words. 
She  noticed  that  the  girl  held  her  hands  to  her  face 
and  that  her  slender  form  was  shaking  with  the  stress 
of  her  emotion. 

She  could  not  see  Luke's  face,  but  she  was  conscious 
that  his  motionless  figure  had  lost  its  upright  grace. 
The  young  stone-carver  seemed  to  droop,  like  a 
sun-flower  whose  stalk  has  been  bent  by  the  wind. 

The  words  of  the  familiar  English  service  were 
borne  intermittently  to  her  ears  as  they  fell  from  the 
lips  of  the  priest  who  had  once  been  her  friend.  It 
struck  her  poignantly  enough,  —  that  brave  human 
defiance,  so  solemn  and  tender,  with  which  humanity 
seems  to  rise  up  in  sublime  desperation  and  hoist  its 
standard  of  hope  against  hope! 

She  wondered  what  the  sceptical  Luke  was  feeling 
all  this  while.  When  Mr.  Clavering  began  to  read  the 
passage  which  is  prefaced  in  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer  by  the  words,  "Then  while  the  earth  be  cast 
upon  the  Body  by  some  standing  by,  the  priest  shall 
say,"  —  the  quiet  sobs  of  poor  little  Ninsy  broke 
into  a  wail  of  passionate  grief,  grief  to  which  Vennie, 
for  all  her  convert's  aloofness  from  Protestant  heresy, 
could  not  help  adding  her  own  tears. 

It  was  the  custom  at  Nevilton  for  the  bearers  of 
the  coflBn,  when  the  service  was  over,  to  re-form  in 
solemn  procession,  and  escort  the  chief  mourners  back 
to  the  house  from  which  they  had  come.  It  was  her 
knowledge  of  this  custom  that  led  Vennie  to  steal 
away  before  the  final  words  were  uttered;  and  her 
hurried    departure    from    the    churchyard    saved    her 


678  WOOD   AND   STONE 

from  being  a  witness  of  the  somewhat  disconcerting 
event  with  which  the  solemn  transaction  closed. 

The  bringing  of  James'  body  to  the  church  had 
been  unfortunately  delayed  at  the  start  by  the 
wayward  movements  of  a  luggage-train,  which  per- 
sisted in  shunting  up  and  down  over  the  level-crossing, 
at  the  moment  w^hen  they  were  carrying  the  coffin  from 
the  house.  This  delay  had  been  followed  by  others, 
owing  to  various  unforeseen  causes,  and  by  the  time 
the  service  actually  began  it  was  already  close  upon 
the  hour  fixed  for  the  confirmation. 

Thus  it  happened  that,  soon  after  Vennie's  depar- 
ture, at  the  very  moment  when  the  procession  of 
bearers,  followed  by  Luke  and  the  station-master's 
wife,  issued  forth  into  the  street,  there  drove  up  to 
the  church-door  a  two-horsed  carriage  containing 
Gladys  and  her  mother,  the  former  all  whitely  veiled, 
as  if  she  were  a  child-bride.  Seeing  the  bearers  troop 
by,  the  fair-haired  candidate  for  confirmation  clutched 
Mrs.  Romer's  arm  and  held  her  in  her  place,  but 
leaning  forward  in  the  effort  of  this  movement  she 
presented  her  face  at  the  carriage  window,  just  as 
Luke  himself  emerged  from  the  gates. 

The  two  young  people  found  themselves  looking 
one  another  straight  in  the  eyes,  until  with  a  shudder- 
ing spasm  that  shook  her  whole  frame,  Gladys  sank 
back  into  her  seat,  as  if  from  the  effect  of  a  crushing 
blow  received  full  upon  the  breast. 

Luke  passed  on,  following  the  bearers,  with  some- 
thing like  the  ghost  of  a  smile  upon  his  drawn  and 
contorted  lips. 


CHAPTER   XXVII 

VENNIE  SELDOM 

IT  was  not  towards  her  mother's  house  that 
Vennie  directed  her  steps  when  she  left  the 
churchyard.  She  turned  sharp  to  the  west,  and 
walked  rapidly  down  the  central  street  of  the  village 
into  the  square  at  the  end  of  it. 

Here  she  found  an  arena  of  busy  and  stirring 
confusion,  dominated  by  hissing  spouts  of  steam, 
hoarse  whistlings  from  the  "roundabout"  engines,  and 
occasional  bursts  of  extravagant  melody,  as  the 
circus-men  made  their  musical  experiments,  pending 
the  opening  of  the  show. 

Vennie's  intention,  in  crossing  the  square,  was  to 
pay  a  morning  visit  to  Mr.  Quincunx,  whose  absence 
from  Andersen's  funeral  had  struck  her  mind  as 
extraordinary  and  ominous.  She  feared  that  the 
recluse  must  be  ill.  Nothing  less  than  illness,  she 
thought,  would  have  kept  him  away  from  such  an 
event.  She  knew  how  closely  he  and  the  younger 
stone-carver  were  associated,  and  it  was  inconceivable 
that  any  insane  jealousy  of  the  dead  could  have  held 
him  at  home.  Of  course  it  was  possible  that  he  had 
been  compelled  to  go  to  work  at  Yeoborough  as  usual, 
but  she  did  not  think  this  likely. 

It  was,  however,  not  only  anxiety  lest  her  mother's 
queer  friend  should  be  ill  that  actuated  her.  She 
felt,  —  now  that  her  ultimatum  had  been  delivered,  — 


680  WOOD  AND   STONE 

that  the  sooner  she  entered  the  Catholic  Church  and 
plunged  into  her  novitiate,  the  better  it  would  be. 
When  events  had  happened,  Mrs.  Seldom  accepted 
them.  It  was  during  the  days  of  uncertain  waiting 
that  her  nerves  broke  down.  Once  the  daughter 
were  actually  a  postulant  in  a  convent,  she  felt  sure 
the  mother  would  resign  herself,  and  resume  her 
normal  life. 

Valentia  was  a  very  independent  and  self-sufficient 
woman.  With  her  favourite  flowers  and  her  favourite 
biographies  of  proconsular  personages,  the  girl  felt 
convinced  she  would  be  much  less  heart-broken  than 
she  imagined. 

Her  days  in  Nevilton  being  thus  numbered,  Vennie 
could  not  help  giving  way  to  a  desire  that  had  lately 
grown  more  and  more  definite  within  her,  to  have  a 
bold  and  unhesitating  interview  with  Mr.  Quincunx. 
Perhaps  even  at  this  last  hour  something  might  be 
done  to  save  Lacrima  from  her  fate! 

Passing  along  the  outskirts  of  the  circus,  she  could 
not  resist  pausing  for  a  moment  to  observe  the  numer- 
ous groups  of  well-known  village  characters,  whom 
curiosity  had  drawn  to  the  spot. 

She  was  amazed  to  catch  sight  of  the  redoubtable 
Mr.  Wone,  holding  one  of  his  younger  children  by 
the  hand  and  surveying  with  extreme  interest  the 
setting  up  of  a  colossal  framework  of  gilded  and 
painted  wood,  destined  to  support  certain  boat- 
shaped  swings.  She  felt  a  little  indignant  with  the 
worthy  man  for  not  having  been  present  at  Ander- 
sen's funeral,  but  the  naive  and  childlike  interest  with 
which,  with  open  mouth  and  eyes,  he  stood  gaping  at 
this    glittering    erection,    soothed    her    anger    into    a 


VENNIE   SELDOM  081 

smile.  He  really  was  a  good  sort  of  man,  this  poor 
Wone!  She  wondered  vaguely  whether  he  intended 
himself  to  indulge  in  the  pastime  of  swinging  in  a 
boat-shaped  swing  or  whirling  round  upon  a  wooden 
horse.  She  felt  that  if  she  could  see  him  on  one  of 
these  roundabouts,  —  especially  if  he  retained  that 
expression  of  guileless  admiration,  —  she  could  really 
forgive  him  everything. 

She  caught  a  glimpse  of  two  other  figures  whose 
interest  in  the  proceedings  appeared  extremely  vivid, 
no  less  persons  than  Mr.  John  Goring  and  his  de- 
voted henchman,  Bert  Leerd.  These  two  were 
engaged  in  reading  a  glaring  advertisement  which  de- 
picted a  young  woman  clad  in  astounding  spangles 
dancing  on  a  tight-rope,  and  it  was  difficult  to  say 
whether  the  farmer  or  the  idiot  was  the  more 
absorbed. 

She  was  just  turning  away,  when  she  heard  her- 
self called  by  name,  and  from  amid  a  crowd  of  women 
clustering  round  one  of  Mr.  Love's  bric-a-brac  stalls, 
there  came  towards  her,  together,  Mrs.  Fringe  and 
Mrs.  Wotnot. 

Vennie  was  extremely  surprised  to  find  these  two 
ladies,  —  by  no  means  particularly  friendly  as  a  rule, 
—  thus  joined  in  partnership  of  dissipation,  but  she 
supposed  the  influence  of  a  circus,  like  the  influence 
of  religion,  has  a  dissolvent  effect  upon  human  ani- 
mosity. That  these  excellent  women  should  have 
preferred  the  circus,  however,  to  the  rival  entertain- 
ment in  the  churchyard,  did  strike  her  mind  as  ex- 
traordinary. She  did  not  know  that  they  had,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  "eaten  their  pot  of  honey"  at  the 
one,  before  proceeding,  post-haste,  to  enjoy  the  other. 


682  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"May  we  walk  with  you,  miss,  a  step?"  suppli- 
cated Mrs.  Fringe,  as  Vennie  indicated  her  intention 
of  moving  on,  as  soon  as  their  salutations  were 
over. 

"Thank  you,  you  are  very  kind,  Mrs.  Fringe. 
Perhaps,  —  a  little  way,  but  I'm  rather  busy  this 
morning." 

"Oh  we  shan't  trouble  you  long,"  murmured  Mrs. 
Wotnot,  "It's  only,  —  well,  Mrs.  Fringe,  here,  had 
better  speak." 

Thus  it  came  about  that  Vennie  began  her  advance 
up  the  Yeoborough  road  supported  by  the  two  house- 
keepers, the  lean  one  on  the  left  of  her,  and  the  fat 
one  on  the  right  of  her. 

"Will  I  tell  her,  or  will  you  tell  her?"  murmured 
the  plump  lady  sweetly,  when  they  were  clear  of  the 
village. 

Mrs.  Wotnot  made  a  curious  grimace  and  clasped 
and  unclasped  her  hands. 

"Better  you;  much,  much  better,  that  it  should 
be  you,"  she  remarked. 

"But  'twas  thy  tale,  dearie;  'twas  thy  tale  and 
surprisin'  discoverin's,"  protested  Mrs.  Fringe. 

"Those  that  knows  aren't  always  those  that  tells," 
observed  the  other  sententiously. 

"But  you  do  think  it's  proper  and  right  the  young 
lady  should  know?"  said  Mr.  Clavering's  housekeeper. 

Mrs.   Wotnot  nodded.     "If  'taint  too  shameful   for 
her,  'tis  best  what  she'd  a'  ought  to  hear,"  said  the  jf 
lean  woman. 

Vennie  became  conscious  at  this  moment  that 
whenever  Mrs.  Wotnot  opened  her  mouth  there 
issued  thence  a  most  unpleasant  smell  of  brandy,  and 


i 


VENNIE  SELDOM  683 

it  flashed  upon  her  that  tliis  was  the  explanation  of 
the  singular  converging  of  these  antipodal  orbits.  In 
the  absence  of  her  master,  Mrs.  Wotnot  had  evidently 
"taken  to  drink,"  and  it  was  doubtless  out  of  her 
protracted  intoxication  that  Mrs.  Fringe  had  derived 
whatever  scandalous  piece  of  gossip  it  was  that  she 
was  now  so  anxious  to  impart. 

"I'll  tell  'ee,  miss,"  said  Mrs.  Fringe,  "with  no 
nonsense-fangles  and  no  shilly-shally.  I'll  tell  'ee 
straight  out  and  sober,  —  same  as  our  dear  friend 
did  tell  it  to  me.  'Tis  along  of  Miss  Romer,  —  ye 
be  to  understand,  wot  is  to  be  confirmed  this  same 
blessed  day. 

"The  dear  woman,  here,  was  out  a-gatherin'  laurel- 
leaves  one  fine  evenin',  long  o'  some  weeks  since,  and 
who  should  she  get  wind  of,  in  the  bushes  near-by, 
but  Mr.  Luke  and  Miss  Gladys.  I  been  my  own  self 
ere  now,  moon-daft  on  that  there  lovely  young  man, 
but  Satan's  ways  be  Satan's  ways,  and  none  shall 
report  that  I  takes  countenance  of  such  goings  on. 
Mrs.  Wotnot  here,  she  heerd  every  Jack  word  them 
sinful  young  things  did  say,  —  and  shameful-awful 
their  words  were,  God  in  Heaven  do  know! 

"They  were  cursin'  one  another,  like  to  split,  that 
night.  She  were  cryin'  and  fandanderin'  and  he 
were  laughin'  and  chafEn'.  'Twas  God's  terror  to  hear 
how  they  went  on,  with  the  holy  bare  sky  over  their 
shameless  heads!" 

"Tell  the  young  lady  quick  and  plain,"  ejaculated 
Mrs.  Wotnot  at  this  point,  clutching  Vennie's  arm 
and  arresting  their  advance. 

"I  am  'a  tellin'  her,"  retorted  Mrs.  Fringe,  "I'm 
a  tellin'  as  fast  as  my  besom  can  breathe.     Don't  'ee 


684 


WOOD  AND  STONE 


push   a   body   so!     The  young  lady   ain't   in   such   a 
tantrum-hurry  as  all  that." 

"I  am  rather  anxious  to  get  on  with  my  walk," 
threw  in  Vennie,  looking  from  one  to  another  with 
some  embarrassment,  "and  I  really  don't  care  very 
much  about  hearing  things  of  this  kind." 

"Tell'er!    Tell 'er!    Tell 'er!"  cried  Mrs.  Wotnot. 

Mrs.  Fringe  cast  a  contemptuous  look  at  her  rival 
house-keeper. 

"Our  friend  baint  quite  her  own  self  today,  miss," 
she  remarked  with  a  wink  at  Vennie,  "the  weather 
or  summat'  'ave  moved  'er  rheumatiz  from  'er  legs, 
and  settled  it  in  'er  stummick." 

"Tell  her!     Tell  her!"  reiterated  the  other. 

Mrs.  Fringe  lowered  her  voice  to  a  pregnant 
whisper. 

"The  truth  be,  miss,  that  our  friend  here  heered 
these  wicked  young  things  talk  quite  open-like  about 
their  gay  goings  on.  So  plain  did  they  talk,  that 
all  wot  the  Blessed  Lord  'is  own  self  do  know,  of 
such  as  most  folks  keeps  to  'emselves,  went  burnin' 
and  shamin'  into  our  friend's  'stonished  ears.  And  wot 
she  did  gather  was  that  Miss  Gladys,  for  certin'  and 
sure,  be  a  lost  girl,  and  Mr.  Luke  'as  'ad  'is  bit  of, 
fun  down  to  the  uttermost  drop." 

The  extraordinary  solemnity  with  which  Mrs. 
Fringe  uttered  these  words  and  the  equally  extraor- 
dinary solemnity  with  which  Mrs.  Wotnot  nodded 
her  head  in  corroboration  of  their  truth  had  a  devas- 
tating effect  upon  Vennie.  There  was  no  earthly 
reason  why  these  two  females  should  have  invented 
this  squalid  story.  Mrs.  Fringe  was  an  incurable 
scandal-monger,   but  Vennie   had  never  found  her  a 


VENNIE  SELDOM  685 

liar.  Besides  there  was  a  genuine  note  of  shocked 
sincerity  about  her  tone  which  no  mere  morbid  sus- 
picion could  have  evoked. 

The  thing  was  true  then!  Gladys  and  Luke  were 
lovers,  in  the  most  extreme  sense  of  that  word,  and 
Dangelis  was  the  victim  of  an  outrageous  betrayal. 

Vennie  had  sufficient  presence  of  mind  to  avoid  the 
eyes  of  both  the  women,  eyes  fixed  with  ghoulish  and 
lickerish  interest  upon  her,  as  they  watched  for  the 
eflFect  of  this  revelation,  —  but  she  was  uncomfortably 
conscious  that  her  cheeks  were  flaming  and  her  voice 
strained  as  she  bade  them  good-bye.  Comment,  of 
any  kind,  upon  what  they  had  revealed  to  her  she 
found  absolutely  impossible.  She  could  only  wish 
them  a  pleasant  time  at  the  circus  if  they  were 
returning  thither,  and  freedom  from  any  ill  effects 
due  to  their  accompanying  her  so  far. 

When  she  was  alone,  and  beginning  to  climb  the 
ascent  of  Dead  Man's  Lane,  the  full  implication  of 
what  she  had  learnt  thrust  itself  through  her  brain 
like  a  red-hot  wedge.  Vennie's  experience  of  the 
treacherousness  of  the  world  had,  as  we  know,  gone 
little  deeper  than  her  reaction  from  the  rough  dis- 
courtesy of  Mr.  Clavering  and  the  evasive  aloofness 
of  Mr.  Taxater.  This  sudden  revelation  into  the 
brutishness  and  squalour  inherent  in  our  planetary 
system  had  the  effect  upon  her  of  an  access  of  physical 
nausea.  She  felt  dizzy  and  sick,  as  she  toiled  up  the 
hill,  between  the  wet  sun-pierced  hedges,  and  under 
the  heavy  September  trees. 

The  feeling  of  autumn  in  the  air,  so  pleasant  under 
normal  conditions  to  human  senses,  seemed  to  asso- 
ciate  itself  just   now   with   this   dreadful   glance   she 


686  WOOD  AND  STONE 

had  had  into  the  basic  terrors  of  things.  The  whole 
atmosphere  about  her  seemed  to  smell  of  decay,  of 
decomposition,  of  festering  mortality.  The  pull  and 
draw  of  the  thick  Nevilton  soil,  its  horrible  demonic 
gravitation,  had  never  got  hold  of  her  more  tena- 
ciously than  it  did  then.  She  felt  as  though  some 
vast  octopus-like  tentacles  were  dragging  her  earth- 
ward. 

Vennie  was  one  of  those  rare  women  for  whom, 
even  under  ordinary  conditions,  the  idea  of  sex  is 
distasteful  and  repulsive.  Presented  to  her  as  it  was 
now,  mingled  with  treachery  and  deception,  it  ob- 
sessed her  with  an  almost  living  presence.  Sensuality 
had  always  been  for  her  the  one  unpardonable  sin, 
and  sensuality  of  this  kind,  turning  the  power  of  sex 
into  a  mere  motive  for  squalid  pleasure-seeking,  filled 
her  with  a  shuddering  disgust. 

So  this  was  what  men  and  women  were  like!  This 
was  the  kind  of  thing  that  went  on,  under  the  "covert 
and  convenient  seeming"  of  affable  lies! 

The  whole  of  nature  seemed  to  have  become,  in 
one  moment,  foul  and  miasmic.  Rank  vapours  rose 
from  the  ground  at  her  feet,  and  the  weeds  in  the 
hedge  took  odious  and  indecent  shapes. 

An  immense  wave  of  distrust  swept  over  her  for 
everyone  that  she  knew.  Was  Mr.  Clavering  himself 
like  this.'* 

This  thought,  —  the  thought  of  what,  for  all  she 
could  tell,  might  exist  between  her  priest-friend  and 
this  harlot-girl,  —  flushed  her  cheeks  with  a  new 
emotion.  Mixed  at  that  moment  with  her  virginal 
horror  of  the  whole  squalid  business,  was  a  pang  of 
quite  a  different  character,  a  pang  that  approached, 


VENNIE   SELDOM  687 

if  it  did  not  reach,  the  sharp  sting  of  sheer  physical 
jealousy. 

As  soon  as  she  became  aware  of  this  feeling  in 
herself  it  sickened  her  with  a  deeper  loathing.  Was 
she  also  contaminated,  like  the  rest.''  Was  no  living 
human  being  free  from  this  taint? 

She  stopped  and  passed  her  hand  across  her  fore- 
head. She  took  off  her  hat  and  made  a  movement 
with  her  arms  as  if  thrusting  away  some  invisible 
assailant.  She  felt  she  could  not  encounter  even 
Mr.  Quincunx  in  this  obsessed  condition.  She  had 
the  sensation  of  being  infected  by  some  kind  of 
odious  leprosy. 

She  sat  down  in  the  hedge,  heedless  of  the  still 
clinging  dew.  Strange  and  desperate  thoughts  whirled 
through  her  brain.  She  longed  to  purge  herself  in 
some  way,  to  bathe  deep,  deep,  —  body  and  soul, — 
in  some  cleansing  stream. 

But  what  about  Gladys'  betrothed .f*  What  about 
the  American.?  Vennie  had  scarcely  spoken  to 
Dangelis,  hardly  ever  seen  him,  but  she  felt  a  wave  of 
sympathy  for  the  betrayed  artist  surge  through  her 
heart.  It  could  not  be  allowed,  —  it  could  not,  —  that 
those  two  false  intriguers  should  fool  this  innocent 
gentleman! 

Struck  by  a  sudden  illumination  as  if  from  the 
unveiled  future,  she  saw  herself  going  straight  to 
Dangelis  and  revealing  the  whole  story.  He  should 
at  least  be  made  aware  of  the  real  nature  of  the  girl 
he  was  marrying! 

Having  resolved  upon  this  bold  step,  Vennie  recov- 
ered something  of  her  natural  mood.  Where  was  Mr. 
Dangelis  at  this  moment?     She  must  find  that  out,  — 


688  WOOD   AND   STONE 

perhaps  Mr.  Quincunx  would  know.  She  must  make 
a  struggle  to  waylay  the  artist,  to  get  an  interview 
with  him  alone. 

She  rose  to  her  feet,  and  holding  her  hat  in  her 
hand,  advanced  resolutely  up  the  lane.  She  felt 
happier  now,  relieved,  in  a  measure,  of  that  odious 
sense  of  confederacy  with  gross  sin  which  had  weighed 
her  down.  But  there  still  beat  vaguely  in  her  brain 
a  passionate  longing  for  purification.  If  only  she 
could  escape,  even  for  a  few  hours,  from  this  lust- 
burdened  spot!  If  only  she  could  cool  her  forehead 
in  the  sea! 

As  she  approached  Mr.  Quincunx's  cottage  she  ex- 
perienced a  calm  and  restorative  reaction  from  her 
distress  of  mind.  She  felt  no  longer  alone  in  the 
world.  Having  resolved  on  a  drastic  stroke  on  behalf 
of  clear  issues,  she  was  strangely  conscious,  as  she 
had  not  been  conscious  for  many  months,  of  the 
presence,  near  her  and  with  her,  of  the  Redeemer  of 
men. 

It  suddenly  was  borne  in  upon  her  that  that  other 
criminal  abuse,  which  had  so  long  oppressed  her  soul 
with  a  dead  burden,  —  the  affair  of  Lacrima  and 
Goring,  —  was  intimately  associated  with  what  she 
had  discovered.  It  was  more  than  likely  that  by 
exposing  the  one  she  could  prevent  the  other. 

Flushed  with  excitement  at  this  thought  she  opened 
Mr.  Quincunx's  gate  and  walked  up  his  garden-path. 
To  her  amazement,  she  heard  voices  in  the  cottage 
and  not  only  voices,  but  voices  speaking  in  a  language 
that  vaguely  reminded  her  of  the  little  Catholic 
services  in  the  chapel  at  Yeoborough. 

Mr.    Quincunx    himself    answered    her    knock    and 


VENNIE   SELDOM  689 

opened  the  door.  He  was  strangely  agitated.  The  hand 
which  he  extended  to  her  shook  as  it  touclicd  her  fingers. 

But  Vennie  herself  was  too  astonished  at  the  sight 
which  met  her  eyes  to  notice  anything  of  this.  Seated 
opposite  one  another,  on  either  side  of  the  solitary's 
kitchen-fire,  were  Lacrinia  and  the  little  Dolores. 
Vennie  had  interrupted  a  Hvely  and  impassioned 
colloquy  between  the  two  Italians. 

They  both  rose  at  her  entrance,  and  their  host, 
in  hurried  nervous  speech,  gave  Vennie  an  incoherent 
account  of  what  had  happened. 

When  they  were  all  seated,  —  Vennie  in  the  little 
girl's  chair,  and  the  child  on  Mr,  Quincunx's  knees,  — 
the  embarrassment  of  the  first  surprise  quickly  sub- 
sided. 

"I  shall  adopt  her,"  the  solitary  kept  repeating,  — 
as  though  the  words  were  uttered  in  a  defiance  of 
universal  opposition,  "I  shall  adopt  her.  You'd 
advise  me  to  do  that,  wouldn't  you  Miss  Seldom? 

"I  shall  get  a  proper  document  made  out,  so  that 
there  can  be  no  mistake.  I  shall  adopt  her.  What- 
ever anyone  likes  to  say,  I  shall  adopt  her! 

"Those  circus-scoundrels  will  hold  their  tongues  and 
let  me  alone  for  their  own  sakes.  I  shall  have  no 
trouble.  Lacrima  will  explain  to  the  the  police  who 
the  child  is,  and  who  her  parents  were.  That  is,  if 
the  police  come.  But  they  won't  come.  Why  should 
they  come?     I  shall  have  a  document  drawn  out." 

It  seemed  as  though  the  little  Neapolitan  knew  by 
instinct  what  her  protector  was  saying,  for  she  nestled 
down  against  his  shoulder  and  taking  one  of  his  hands 
in  both  of  hers  pressed  it  against  her  lips. 

Vennie   gazed   at   Lacrima,   and   Lacrima   gazed   at 


690  WOOD  AND   STONE 

Vennie,  but  neither  of  them  spoke.  There  was  an 
inner  flame  of  triumphant  concentration  in  Vennie's 
glance,  but  Lacrima's  look  was  clouded  and  sad. 

"Certainly  no  one  will  interfere  with  you,"  said 
Vennie  at  last.  "We  shall  all  be  so  glad  to  think 
that  the  child  is  in  such  good  hands. 

"The  only  diSiculty  I  can  see,"  she  paused  a  mo- 
ment, while  the  grey  eyes  of  Mr.  Quincunx  opened 
wide  and  an  expression  of  something  like  defiance 
passed  over  his  face,  "is  that  it'll  be  difficult  for  you 
to  know  what  to  do  with  her  while  you  are  away  in 
Yeoborough.  You  could  hardly  leave  her  alone  in 
this  out-of-the-way  place,  and  I'm  afraid  our  Nevilton 
National  School  wouldn't  suit  her  at  all." 

Mr..  Quincunx  freed  his  hand  and  stroked  his  beard. 
His  fingers  were  quivering,  and  Vennie  noticed  a 
certain  curious  twitching  in  the  muscles  of  his  face. 

"I  shan't  go  to  Yeoborough  any  more,"  he  cried. 
"None  of  you  need  think  it! 

"That  affair  is  over  and  done  with.  I  shan't  stay 
here,  any  more,  either,  to  be  bullied  by  the  Romers 
and  made  a  fool  of  by  all  these  idiots.  I  shall  go 
away.  I  shall  go  —  far  away  —  to  London  —  to 
Liverpool,  —  to  —  to  Norwich,  —  like  the  Man  in  the 
Moon!" 

This  final  inspiration  brought  a  flicker  of  his  old 
goblin-humour  to  the  corners  of  his  mouth. 

Lacrima  looked  at  Vennie  with  an  imperceptible 
lifting  of  her  eyebrows,  and  then  sighed  deeply. 

The  latter  clasped  the  arms  of  her  high-backed 
chair  with  firm  hands. 

"I  think  it  is  essential  that  you  should  know  where 
you  are  going,  Mr.  Quincunx.     I  mean  for  the  child's 


VENNIE  SELDOM  091 

sake.  You  surely  don't  wish  to  drag  her  aimlessly 
about  these  great  cities  while  you  look  for  work? 

"Besides, — you  won't  be  angry  will  you,  if  I 
speak  plainly?  —  what  work,  exactly,  have  you  in 
your  mind  to  do?     It  isn't,  I'm  afraid,  always  easy  —  " 

Mr.  Quincunx  interrupted  her  with  an  outburst  of 
unexpected  fury. 

"That's  what  I  knew  you'd  say!"  he  cried  in  a 
loud  voice.  "That's  what  she  says.  "  He  indicated 
Lacrima.  "But  you  both  say  it,  only  because  you  don't 
want  me  to  have  the   pleasure  of  adopting   Dolores! 

"But  I  shall  adopt  her, —  in  spite  of  you  all.  Yes,  in 
spite  of  you  all!    Nothing  shall  stop  me  adopting  her!" 

Once  more  the  little  Italian  nestled  close  against 
him,    and    took    possession    of    his    trembling    hand. 

Vennie  perceived  an  expression  of  despairing  hope- 
lessness pass  like  an  icy  mist  over  Lacrima's  face. 

The  profile  of  the  Nevilton  nun  assumed  those  lines 
of  commanding  obstinacy  which  had  reminded 
Valentia  a  few  hours  ago  of  the  mediaeval  baron. 
She  rose  to  her  feet. 

"Listen  to  me,  Mr.  Quincunx,"  she  said  sternly. 
"You  are  right;  you  are  quite  right,  to  wish  to  save 
this  child.  No  one  shall  stop  you  saving  her.  No 
one  shall  stop  you  adopting  her.  But  there  are  other 
people  whose  happiness  depends  upon  what  you  do, 
besides  this  child." 

She  paused,  and  glanced  from  Mr.  Quincunx  to 
Lacrima,  and  from  Lacrima  to  Mr.  Quincunx.  Then 
a  look  of  indescribable  domination  and  power  passed 
into  her  face.  She  might  have  been  St.  Catharine 
herself,  magnetizing  the  whole  papal  court  into 
obedience  to  her  will. 


C92  WOOD   AND   STONE 

"Oh  you  foolish  people!"  she  cried,  "you  foolish 
people!  Can't  you  see  where  God  is  leading  you? 
Can't  you  see  where  His  Spirit  has  brought  you?" 

She  turned  upon  Mr.  Quincunx  with  shining  eyes, 
while  Lacrima,  white  as  a  phantom  and  with  drooping 
mouth,  watched  her  in  amazement. 

"It's  not  only  this  child  He's  helped  you  to  save," 
she  went  on.  "It's  not  only  this  child!  Are  you 
blind  to  what  He  means?  Don't  you  understand  the 
cruelty  that  is  being  done  to  your  friend?  Don't 
you  understand?" 

She  stretched  out  her  arm  and  touched  Mr.  Quin- 
cunx's shoulder. 

"You  must  do  more  than  give  this  little  one  a  fa- 
ther," she  murmured  in  a  low  tone,  "you  must  give  her 
a  mother.    How  can  she  be  happy  without  a  mother? 

"Come,"  she  went  on,  in  a  voice  vibrating  with 
magnetic  authority,  "there's  no  other  way.  You  and 
Lacrima  must  join  hands.  You  must  join  hands  at 
once,  and  defy  everyone.  Our  little  wanderer  must 
have  both  father  and  mother!  That  is  what  God 
intends." 

There  was  a  long  and  strange  silence,  broken  only 
by  the  ticking  of  the  clock. 

Then  Mr.  Quincunx  slowly  rose,  allowed  the  child 
to  sink  down  into  his  empty  chair,  and  crossed  over 
to  Lacrima's  side.  Very  solemnly,  and  as  if  registering 
a  sacred  vow,  he  took  his  friend's  head  between  his 
hands  and  kissed  her  on  the  forehead.  Then,  search- 
ing for  her  hand  and  holding  it  tightly  in  his  own,  he 
turned  towards  Vennie,  while  Lacrima  herself,  pressing 
her  face  against  his  shabby  coat,  broke  into  convulsive 
crying. 


VENNIE   SELDOM  693 

"I'll  take  your  advice,"  he  said  gravely.  "I'll 
take  it  without  question.  There  are  more  difficulties 
in  the  way  than  you  know,  but  I'll  do,  —  we'll  do, 
—  just  what  you  tell  us.  I  can't  think — "  he  hesi- 
tated for  a  moment,  while  a  curious  smile  flickered 
across  his  face,  "how  on  earth  I'm  going  to  manage. 
I  can't  think  how  we're  going  to  get  away  from  here. 
But  I'll  take  your  advice  and  we'll  do  exactly  as 
you  say. 

"We'll  do  what  she  says,  won't  we,  Lacrima.''" 

Lacrima's  only  answer  was  to  conceal  her  face  still 
more  completely  in  his  dusty  coat,  but  her  crying 
became  quieter  and  presently  ceased  altogether. 

At  that  moment  there  came  a  sharp  knock  a  the 
door. 

The  countenance  of  Mr.  Quincunx  changed.  He 
dropped  his  friend's  hand,  and  moved  into  the  centre 
of  the  room. 

"That  must  be  the  circus-people,"  he  whispered. 
"They've  come  for  Dolores.  You'll  support  me  won't 
you?"  He  looked  imploringly  at  Vennie.  "You'll 
tell  them  they  can't  have  her  —  that  I  refuse  to  give 
her  up  — that  I'm  going  to  adopt  her.f*" 

He  went  out  and  opened  the  door. 

It  was  not  the  circus-men  he  found  waiting  on  his 
threshold.  Nor  was  it  the  police.  It  was  only  one 
of  the  under-gardeners  from  Nevilton  House.  The 
youth  explained  that  Mr.  Romer  had  sent  him  to  fetch 
Lacrima. 

"They  be  goin'  to  lunch  early,  mistress  says,  and 
the  young  lady  'ave  to  come  right  along  'ome  wi'  I." 

Vennie  intervened  at  this  moment  between  her 
agitated  host  and  the  intruder. 


694  WOOD  AND   STONE 

"I'll  bring  Miss  Traffic  home,"  she  said  sternly, 
"when  she's  ready  to  come.  You  may  go  back  and 
tell  Mrs.  Romer  that  she's  with  me,  —  with  Miss 
Seldom." 

The  youth  touched  his  hat,  and  slouched  off, 
without  further  protest. 

Vennie,  returning  into  the  kitchen,  found  Mr. 
Quincunx  standing  thoughtfully  by  the  mantel-piece, 
stroking  his  beard,  and  the  two  Italians  engaged  in 
an  excited  conversation  in  their  own  tongue. 

The  descendant  of  the  lords  of  Nevilton  meditated 
for  a  moment  with  drooping  head,  her  hands  char- 
acteristically clasped  behind  her  back.  When  she 
lifted  up  her  chin  and  began  to  speak,  there  was  the 
same  concentrated  light  in  her  eyes  and  the  same 
imperative  tone  in  her  voice. 

"The  thing  for  us  to  do,"  she  said,  speaking  hur- 
riedly but  firmly,  "is  to  go  —  all  four  of  us  —  straight 
away  from  here!  I'm  not  going  to  leave  you  until 
things  are  settled.  I'm  going  to  get  you  all  clean 
out  of  this,  —  clean  away!" 

She  paused  and  looked  at  Lacrima.  "Where's  Mr. 
Dangelis?"  she  asked. 

Lacrima  explained  how  the  artist  had  written  to 
Gladys  that  he  was  staying  until  the  following  day  at 
the  Gloucester  Hotel  in  Weymouth. 

Vennie's  face  became  radiant  when  she  heard  this. 
"Ah!"  she  cried,  "God  is  indeed  fighting  for  us! 
It's  Dangelis  that  I  must  see,  and  see  at  once.  Where 
better  could  we  all  go,  —  at  any  rate  for  tonight  — 
than  to  Weymouth.'  We'll  think  later  what  must  be 
done  next.  Dangelis  will  help  us.  I'm  perfectly 
certain  he'll  help  us. 


VENNIE   SELDOM  695 

"Oh  yes,  we'll  go  to  Weymouth  at  once,  —  before 
there's  any  risk  of  the  Romers  stopping  us!  We'll 
walk  to  Yeoborough  —  that'll  give  us  time  to  think 
out  our  plans  —  and  take  the  train  from  there. 

"I'll  send  a  telegram  to  my  mother  late  tonight, 
when  there's  no  chance  of  her  communicating  with 
the  House.  As  to  being  seen  in  Yeoborough  by  any 
Nevilton  people,  we  must  risk  that!  God  has  been 
so  good  to  us  today  that  I  can't  believe  He  won't 
go  on  being  good  to  us. 

"Oh  what  a  relief  it'll  be,  —  what  a  relief,  —  to  get 
away  from  Nevilton!  And  I  shall  be  able  to  dip  my 
hands  in  the  sea!" 

While  these  rapid  utterances  fell  from  Vennie's 
excited  lips,  the  face  of  Mr.  Quincunx  was  a  wonder 
to  look  upon.  It  was  the  crisis  of  his  days,  and  he 
displayed  his  knowledge  that  it  was  so  by  more 
convulsive  changes  of  expression,  than  perhaps,  in 
an  equal  stretch  of  time,  had  ever  crossed  the  visage 
of  a  mortal  man. 

"We'll  take  your  advice,"  he  said,  at  last,  with 
immense  solemnity. 

Lacrima  looked  at  him  wistfully.  Her  face  was 
very  pale  and  her  lips  trembled. 

"It  isn't  only  because  of  the  child,  is  it,  that  he's 
ready  to  go?"  she  murmured,  clutching  at  Vennie's 
arm,  as  Mr.  Quincunx  retired  to  make  his  brief 
preparations.  "I  shouldn't  like  to  think  it  was  only 
that.     But  he  is  fond  of  me.     He  is  fond  of  me!" 


CHAPTER   XXVIII 
LCD  MOOR 

IT  was  Mr.  Quincunx  who  had  to  find  the  money 
for  their  boKl  adventure.  Neither  Vennie  nor 
Lacrima  could  discover  a  single  penny  on  their 
persons.  Mr.  Quincunx  produced  it  from  the  bottom 
of  an  old  jam-pot  placed  in  the  interior  recesses  of 
one  of  his  deepest  cupboards.  He  displayed  to  his 
three  friends,  with  not  a  little  pride,  the  sum  he  was 
possessed  of,  —  no  less  in  fact  than  five  golden 
sovereigns. 

Their  walk  to  Yeoborough  was  full  of  thrilling  little 
excitements.  Three  times  they  concealed  themselves 
on  the  further  side  of  the  hedge,  to  let  certain  sus- 
picious pedestrians,  who  might  be  Xexnlton  people, 
pass  by  unastonished. 

Once  well  upon  their  way.  they  all  four  felt  a 
strange  sense  of  liberation  and  expansion.  The  little 
N^eapolitan  walked  between  Mr.  Quincunx  and  Lac- 
rima. a  hand  given  to  each,  and  her  childish  high 
spirits  kept  them  all  from  any  apprehensive  brooding. 

Once  and  once  only,  they  looked  back,  and  Mr. 
Quincunx  shook  his  fist  at  the  two  distant  hills. 

"You  are  right,"  he  remarked  to  Vennie.  *"it*s  the 
sea  we're  in  want  of.  These  curst  inland  fields  have 
the  devil  in  their  hea^'^•  mould." 

They  found  themselves,  when  they  reached  the 
town,  with  au  hour  to  spare  before  their  train  started. 


I 


LODMOOR  697 


and  entering  a  little  dairy-shop  near  the  station, 
they  refreshed  themselves  with  milk  and  bread-and- 
butter.  Here  Mr.  Quincunx  and  the  child  waited 
in  excited  expectation,  while  the  two  girls  went 
out  to  make  some  necessary  purchases  —  returning 
finally,  in  triumph,  with  a  light  wicker-work  suit- 
case, containing  all  that  they  required  for  several  days 
and  nights. 

They  were  in  the  train  at  last,  with  a  compartment 
to  themselves,  and,  as  far  as  they  could  tell,  quite 
undiscovered  by  anyone  who  knew  them. 

Vennie  had  hardly  ever  in  her  life  enjoyed  anything 
more  than  she  enjoyed  that  journey.  She  felt  that 
the  stars  were  fighting  on  her  side  or,  to  put  it  in 
terms  of  her  religion,  that  God  Himself  was  smoothing 
the  road  in  front  of  her. 

She  experienced  a  momentary  pang  when  the  train, 
at  last,  passing  along  the  edge  of  the  backwater, 
ran  in  to  Weymouth  Station.  It  was  so  sweet,  so 
strangely  sweet,  to  know  that  three  living  souls 
depended  upon  her  for  their  happiness,  for  their 
escape  from  the  power  of  the  devil!  Would  she  feel 
like  this,  would  she  ever  feel  quite  like  this,  when 
the  convent-doors  shut  her  away  from  this  exciting 
world? 

They  emerged  from  the  crowded  station,  —  Mr. 
Quincunx  carrying  the  wicker-work  suit-case  —  and 
made  their  way  towards  the  Esplanade. 

The  early  afternoon  sun  lay  hot  upon  the  pave- 
ments, but  from  the  sea  a  strong  fresh  wind  was 
blowing.  Both  the  girls  shivered  a  little  in  their 
thin  frocks,  and  as  the  red  shawl  of  the  young  Italian 
had  already  excited  some  curiosity  among  the  passers- 


698  WOOD   AND   STONE 

by,  they  decided  to  enter  one  of  the  numerous  drapery 
shops,  and  spend  some  more  of  Mr.  Quincunx's 
money. 

They  were  so  long  in  the  shop  that  the  nervous 
excitement  of  the  recluse  was  on  the  point  of  changing 
into  nervous  irritation,  when  at  last  they  reappeared. 
But  he  was  reconciled  to  the  delay  when  he  perceived 
the  admirable  use  they  had  made  of  it. 

All  three  were  wearing  long  tweed  rain-cloaks  of 
precisely  the  same  tint  of  sober  grey.  They  looked 
like  three  sisters,  newly  arrived  from  some  neighbour- 
ing inland  town,  —  Dorchester,  perhaps,  or  Sherborne, 
—  with  a  view  to  spending  a  pleasant  afternoon  at 
the  sea-side.  Not  only  were  they  all  wrapped  in 
the  same  species  of  cloak.  They  had  purchased  three 
little  woollen  caps  of  a  similar  shade,  such  things  as 
it  would  have  been  difficult  to  secure  in  any  shop 
but  a  little  unfashionable  one,  where  summer  and 
winter  vogues  casually  overlapped. 

Mr.  Quincunx,  whose  exaltation  of  mood  had  not 
made  him  forget  to  bring  his  own  overcoat  with  him, 
now  put  this  on,  and  warmly  and  comfortably  clad, 
the  four  fugitives  from  Nevilton  strolled  along  the 
Esplanade  in  the  direction  of  St.  John's  church. 

To  leave  his  three  companions  free  to  run  down  to 
the  sea's  edge,  Mr.  Quincunx  possessed  himself  of 
the  clumsy  paper  parcels  containing  the  hats  they 
had  relinquished  and  also  of  the  little  girl's  red  shawl, 
and  resting  on  a  seat  with  these  objects  piled  up  by 
his  side  he  proceeded  to  light  a  cigarette  and  gaze 
placidly  about  him.  The  worst  of  his  plunge  into 
activity  being  over,  —  for,  whatever  happened,  the 
initial  effort  was  bound  to  be  the  worst,  —  the  wanderer 


LODMOOR  099 


from  Dead  Man's  Lane  chuckled  to  himself  with 
bursts  of  cynical  humour  as  he  contemplated  the 
situation  they  were  in. 

But  what  a  relief  it  was  to  see  the  clear-shining 
foam-sprinkled  expanse  of  water  lying  spread  out 
before  him!  Like  the  younger  Andersen,  Mr.  Quin- 
cunx had  a  passionate  love  of  Weymouth,  and  never 
had  he  loved  it  more  than  he  did  at  that  moment! 
He  greeted  the  splendid  curve  of  receding  cliffs  — • 
the  White  Nore  and  St.  Alban's  head  —  with  a  sigh 
of  profound  satisfaction,  and  he  looked  across  to  the 
massive  bulk  of  Portland,  as  though  in  its  noble 
uncrumbling  stone  —  stone  that  was  so  much  nearer 
to  marble  than  to  clay  —  there  lurked  some  occult 
talisman  ready  to  save  him  from  everything  connected 
with  Leo's  Hill. 

Yes,  the  sea  was  what  he  wanted  just  then!  How 
well  the  salt  taste  of  it,  the  smell  of  its  sun-bleached 
stranded  weeds,  its  wide  horizons,  its  long-drawn 
murmur,  blent  with  the  strange  new  mood  into  which 
that  morning's  events  had  thrown  him! 

How  happy  the  little  Dolores  looked,  between 
Lacrima  and  Vennie,  her  dark  curls  waving  in  the 
wind  from  beneath  her  grey  cap! 

All  at  once  his  mind  reverted  to  James  Andersen, 
lying  now  alone  and  motionless,  under  six  feet  of 
yellow  clay.  Mr.  Quincunx  shivered.  After  all  it 
was  something  to  be  alive  still,  something  to  be  still 
able  to  stroke  one's  beard  and  stretch  one's  legs, 
and  fumble  in  one's  pocket  for  a  "Three  Castles" 
cigarette ! 

He  wondered  vaguely  how  and  when  this  young 
St.    Catharine   of   theirs   intended   to    marry   him    to 


700  WOOD  AND   STONE 

Lacrima.  And  then  what?  Would  he  have  to  work 
frightfully,  preposterously  hard? 

He  chuckled  to  himself  to  think  how  blank  Mr. 
Romer  would  look,  when  he  found  that  both  his 
victims  had  been  spirited  away  in  one  breath.  What 
a  girl  this  Vennie  Seldom  was! 

He  tried  to  imagine  what  it  would  be  like,  this 
business  of  being  married.  After  all,  he  ivas  very 
fond  of  Lacrima.  He  hoped  that  dusky  wavy  hair 
of  hers  were  as  long  as  it  suggested  that  it  was!  He 
liked  girls  to  have  long  hair. 

Would  she  bring  him  his  tea  in  the  morning, 
sometimes,  with  bare  arms  and  bare  feet?  Would 
she  sit  cross-legged  at  the  foot  of  his  bed,  while  he 
drank  it,  and  chatter  to  him  of  what  they  would  do 
when  he  came  back  from  his  work? 

His  work!  That  was  an  aspect  of  the  affair  which 
certainly  might  well  be  omitted. 

And  then,  as  he  stared  at  the  three  girlish  figures 
on  the  beach,  there  came  over  him  the  strange  illusion 
that  both  Vennie  and  Lacrima  were  only  dream- 
people  —  unreal  and  fantastic  —  and  that  the  true 
living  persons  of  his  drama  were  himself  and  his  little 
Neapolitan  waif. 

Suppose  the  three  girls  were  to  take  a  boat  —  one 
of  those  boats  whose  painted  keels  he  saw  glittering 
now  so  pleasantly  on  the  beach  —  and  row  out  into 
the  water.  And  suppose  the  boat  were  upset  and 
both  Vennie  and  Lacrima  drowned?  Would  he  be 
so  sad  to  have  to  live  the  rest  of  his  life  alone  with 
the  little  Dolores? 

Perhaps  it  would  be  better  if  this  event  occurred 
after  Vennie  had  helped  him  to  secure  some  work  to 


LODMOOR  701 


do  —  some  not  too  hard  work!  Well  —  Vennie,  at 
any  rate,  was  going  to  be  drowned  in  a  certain  sense, 
at  least  she  was  meditating  entering  a  convent,  and 
that  was  little  different  from  being  drowned,  or  being 
buried  in  yellow  clay,  like  James  Andersen! 

But  Lacrima  was  not  meditating  entering  a  con- 
vent. Lacrima  was  meditating  being  married  to 
him,  and  being  a  mother  to  their  adopted  child.  He 
hoped  she  would  be  a  gentle  mother.  If  she  were 
not,  if  she  ever  spoke  crossly  to  Dolores,  he  would 
lose  his  temper.  He  would  lose  his  temper  so  much 
that  he  would  tremble  from  head  to  foot!  He  called 
up  an  imaginary  scene  between  them,  a  scene  so 
vivid  that  he  found  himself  trembling  now,  as  his 
hand  rested  upon  the  paper  parcel. 

But  perhaps,  if  by  chance  they  left  England  and 
went  on  a  journey,  —  Witch-Bessie  had  found  a 
journey,  "a  terrible  journey,"  in  the  lines  of  his 
hand,  — Lacrima  would  catch  a  fever  in  some  foreign 
city,  and  he  and  Dolores  would  be  left  alone,  quite 
as  alone  as  if  she  were  drowned  today! 

But  perhaps  it  would  be  he,  Maurice  Quincunx, 
who  would  catch  the  fever.  No!  He  did  not  like 
these  "terrible  journeys."  He  preferred  to  sit  on  a 
seat  on  Weymouth  Esplanade  and  watch  Dolores 
laughing  and  running  into  the  sea  and  picking  up 
shells. 

The  chief  thing  w^as  to  be  alive,  and  not  too  tired, 
or  too  cold,  or  too  hungry,  or  too  harassed  by  inso- 
lent aggressive  people!  How  delicious  a  thing  life 
could  be  if  it  were  only  properly  arranged!  If  cruelty, 
and  brutality,  and  vulgarity,  and  office-work,  were 
removed ! 


702  WOOD  AND   STONE 

He  could  never  be  cruel  to  anyone.  From  that 
worst  sin,  —  if  one  could  talk  of  such  a  thing  as  sin 
in  this  mad  world,  —  his  temperament  entirely  saved 
him.  He  hoped  when  they  were  married  that  Lac- 
rima  would  not  want  him  to  be  too  sentimental 
about  her.  And  he  rather  hoped  that  he  would  still 
have  his  evenings  to  himself,  to  turn  over  the  pages 
of  Rabelais,  when  he  had  kissed  Dolores  good  night. 

His  meditations  were  interrupted  at  this  point  by 
the  return  of  his  companions,  who  came  scrambling 
across  the  shingle,  threading  their  way  among  the 
boats,  laughing  and  talking  merrily,  and  trailing  long 
pieces  of  sea-weed  in  their  hands. 

Vennie  announced  that  since  it  was  nearly  four 
o'clock  it  would  be  advisable  for  them  to  secure  their 
lodging  for  the  night,  and  when  that  was  done  she 
would  leave  them  to  their  own  devices  for  an  hour 
or  two,  while  she  proceeded  to  the  Gloucester  Hotel 
to  have  her  interview   with  Ralph  Dangelis. 

Their  various  sea-spoils  being  all  handed  over  to 
the  excited  little  foundling,  they  walked  slowly  along 
the  Esplanade,  still  bearing  to  the  east,  while  they 
surveyed  the  appearance  of  the  various  "crescents," 
"terraces,"  and  "rows"  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
street.  It  was  not  till  they  arrived  at  the  very  end 
of  these,  that  Vennie,  who  had  assumed  complete 
responsibility  for  their  movements,  piloted  them 
across  the  road. 

The  houses  they  now  approached  were  entitled 
"Brunswick  Terrace,"  and  they  entirely  fulfilled  their 
title  by  suggesting,  in  the  pleasant  liberality  of  their 
bay-windows  and  the  mellow  dignity  of  their  well- 
proportioned  fronts,   the  sort  of  solid  comfort  which 


LODMOOR  703 


the  syllables  "Brunswick"  seem  naturally  to  convey. 
They  began  their  enquiries  for  rooms,  about  five 
doors  from  the  end  of  the  terrace,  but  it  was  not  till 
they  reached  the  last  house,  —  the  last  except  two 
reddish-coloured  ones  of  later  date,  —  that  they 
found  what  they  wanted. 

It  was  arranged  that  the  two  Italians  should  share 
a  room  together.  Vennie  elected  to  sleep  in  a  small 
apartment  adjoining  theirs,  while  Mr.  Quincunx  was 
given  a  front-room,  looking  out  on  the  sea,  on  the 
third  floor. 

Vennie  smiled  to  herself  as  she  thought  how  amazed 
her  mother  would  have  been  could  she  have  seen  her 
at  that  moment,  as  she  helped  Lacrima  to  unpack 
their  solitary  piece  of  luggage,  while  Mr.  Quincunx 
smoked  cigarettes  in  the  balcony  of  the  window! 

She  left  them  finally  in  the  lodging-house  parlour, 
seated  on  a  horse-hair  sofa,  watching  the  prim  land- 
lady preparing  tea.  Vennie  refused  to  wait  for  this 
meal,  being  anxious  —  she  said  —  to  get  her  interview 
with  the  American  well  over,  for  until  that  moment 
had  been  reached,  she  could  neither  discuss  their 
future  plans  calmly,  nor  enjoy  the  flavour  of  the 
adventure. 

When  Vennie  had  left  them,  and  the  three  were  all 
comfortably  seated  round  the  table,  Mr.  Quincunx 
found  Lacrima  in  so  radiant  a  mood  that  he  began 
to  feel  a  little  ashamed  of  his  ambiguous  meditations 
on  the  Esplanade.  She  was,  after  all,  quite  beauti- 
ful in  her  way,  —  though,  of  course,  not  as  beautiful 
as  the  young  Neapolitan,  whose  eyes  had  a  look  in 
them,  even  when  she  was  happy,  which  haunted  one 
and  filled  one  with  vague  indescribable  emotions. 


704  WOOD  AND  STONE 

Mr.  Quincunx  himself  was  in  the  best  of  spirits. 
His  beard  wagged,  his  nostrils  quivered,  his  wit 
flowed.  Lacrima  fixed  her  eyes  upon  him  with  de- 
lighted appreciation,  —  and  led  him  on  and  on, 
through  a  thousand  caprices  of  fancy.  The  poor 
Pariah's  heart  was  full  of  exquisite  happiness.  She 
felt  like  one  actually  liberated  from  the  tomb.  For 
the  first  time  since  she  had  known  anything  of  Eng- 
land she  was  able  to  breathe  freely  and  spontaneously 
and  be  her  natural  self. 

For  some  queer  reason  or  other,  her  thoughts  kept 
reverting  to  James  Andersen,  but  reverting  to  him 
with  neither  sadness  nor  pity.  She  felt  no  remorse 
for  not  having  been  present  when  he  was  buried  that 
morning.  She  did  not  feel  as  though  he  were  buried. 
She  did  not  feel  as  though  he  were  dead.  She  felt, 
in  some  strange  way,  that  he  had  merely  escaped  from 
the  evil  spells  of  Nevilton,  and  that  in  the  power  of 
his  new  strength  he  was  the  cause  of  her  own 
emancipation. 

And  what  an  emancipation  it  was!  It  was  like  sud- 
denly becoming  a  child  again  —  a  child  with  power 
to  enjoy  the  very  things  that  children  so  often  miss. 

Everything  in  this  little  parlour  pleased  her.  The 
blue  vases  on  the  mantelpiece  containing  dusty 
"everlasting  flowers,"  the  plush-framed  portraits  of 
the  landlady's  deceased  parents,  enlarged  to  a  magni- 
tude of  shadowy  dignity  by  some  old-fashioned 
photographic  process,  the  quaint  row  of  minute 
china  elephants  that  stood  on  a  little  bracket  in  the 
corner,  the  glaring  antimacassar  thrown  across  the 
back  of  the  armchair,  the  sea-scents  and  sea-murmurs 
floating  in  through  the  window,  the  melodious  crying 


LODMOOR  705 


of  a  fish-pedler  in  the  street;  all  these  things  thrilled 
her  with  a  sense  of  freedom  and  escape,  which  over- 
brimmed her  heart  with  happiness. 

What  matter,  after  all,  she  thought,  that  her  little 
compatriot  with  the  w^onderful  eyes  had  been  the 
means  of  arousing  her  friend  from  his  inertia!  Her 
long  acquaintance  with  Mr.  Quincunx  had  mellowed 
her  affection  for  him  into  a  tenderness  that  was 
almost  maternal.  She  could  even  find  it  in  her  to 
be  glad  that  she  was  to  be  saved  from  the  burden  of 
struggling  alone  with  his  fits  of  melancholia.  With 
Dolores  to  keep  him  amused,  and  herself  to  look  after 
his  material  wants,  it  seemed  probable  that,  what- 
ever happened,  the  dear  man  would  be  happier  than 
he  had  ever  dreamed  of  being! 

The  uncertainty  of  their  future  weighed  upon  her 
very  little.  She  had  the  true  Pariah  tendency  to 
lie  back  with  arms  outstretched  upon  the  great  tide, 
and  let  it  carry  her  whither  it  pleased.  She  had  done 
this  so  long,  while  the  tide  was  dark  and  evil,  that 
to  do  it  where  the  waters  gleamed  and  shone  was  a 
voluptuous  delight. 

While  her  protegees  were  thus  enjoying  themselves 
Vennie  sought  out  and  entered,  with  a  resolute  bear- 
ing, the  ancient  Gloucester  Hotel.  The  place  had 
recently  been  refitted  according  to  modern  notions 
of  comfort,  but  in  its  general  lines,  and  in  a  certain 
air  it  had  of  liberal  welcoming,  it  preserved  the 
Georgian  touch. 

She  was  already  within  the  hall-way  when,  led  by  an 
indefinable  impulse  to  look  back,  she  caught  sight  of 
Dangelis  himself  walking  rapidly  along  the  Esplanade 
towards  the   very   quarter  from   which  she  had  just 


706  WOOD  AND  STONE 


come.  Without  a  moment's  hesitation  she  ran  down 
the  steps,  crossed  the  road  and  followed  him. 

The  American  seemed  to  be  inspired  by  some  mania 
for  fast  walking  that  afternoon.  Vennie  was  quite 
breathless  before  she  succeeded  in  approaching  him, 
and  she  did  not  manage  to  do  this  until  they  were 
both  very  nearly  opposite  Brunswick  Terrace. 

Just  here  she  was  unwilling  to  make  herself  known, 
as  her  friends  might  at  any  moment  emerge  from  their 
lodging.  She  preferred  to  follow  the  long  strides  of 
the  artist  still  further,  till,  in  fact  he  had  led  her, 
hot  and  exhausted  in  her  new  cloak,  quite  beyond  the 
limits  of  the  houses. 

Where  the  town  ceases,  on  this  eastern  side,  a  long 
white  dusty  road  leads  across  a  mile  or  two  of  level 
ground  before  the  noble  curve  of  cliffs  ending  in  St. 
Alban's  Head  has  its  beginning.  This  road  is  bounded 
on  one  hand  by  a  high  bank  of  shingle  and  on  the 
other  by  a  wide  expanse  of  salt-marshes  known  in 
that  district  under  the  name  of  Lodmoor.  It  was 
not  until  the  American  had  emerged  upon  this  soli- 
tary road  that  his  pursuer  saw  fit  to  bring  him  to 
a  halt. 

"Mr.  Dangelis!"  she  called  out,  "Mr.  Dangelis!" 

He  swung  round  in  astonishment  at  hearing  his 
name.  For  the  first  moment  he  did  not  recognize 
Vennie.  Her  newly  purchased  attire,  —  not  to  speak 
of  her  unnaturally  flushed  cheeks,  —  had  materially 
altered  her  appearance.  When  she  held  out  her  hand, 
however,  and  stopped  to  take  breath,  he  realized 
who  she  was. 

"Oh  Mr.  Dangelis,"  she  gasped,  "I've  been  follow- 
ing you  all  the  way  from  the  Hotel.     I  so  want  to 


LODMOOR  707 


talk  to  you.     You  must  listen  to  me.     It's  very,  very 
important!" 

He  held  his  hat  in  his  hand,  and  regarded  her  with 
smiling  amazement. 

"Well,  Miss  Seldom,  you  are  an  astonishing  person. 
Is  you  mother  here?  Are  you  staying  at  Weymouth? 
How  did  you  catch  sight  of  me?  Certainly  —  by  all 
means  —  tell  me  your  news!  I  long  to  hear  this  thing 
that's  so  important." 

He  made  as  if  he  would  return  with  her  to  the 
town,  but  she  laid  her  hand  on  his  arm. 

"No  —  no!  let's  walk  on  quietly  here.  I  can  talk 
to  you  better  here." 

The  roadway,  however,  proved  so  disconcerting, 
owing  to  great  gusts  of  wind  which  kept  driving  the 
sand  and  dust  along  its  surface,  that  before  Vennie  had 
summoned  up  courage  to  begin  her  story,  they  found 
it  necessary  to  debouch  to  their  left  and  enter  the 
marshy  flats  of  Lodmoor.  They  took  their  way  along 
the  edge  of  a  broad  ditch,  whose  black  peat-bottomed 
waters  were  overhung  by  clumps  of  "Michaelmas 
daisies"  and  sprinkled  with  weird  glaucous-leafed 
plants.  It  was  a  place  of  a  singular  character,  owing 
to  the  close  encounter  in  it  of  land  and  sea,  and  it 
seemed  to  draw  the  appeal  of  its  strange  desolation 
almost  equally  from  both  these  sources. 

Vennie,  on  the  verge  of  speaking,  found  her  senses 
in  a  state  of  morbid  alertness.  Everything  she  felt 
and  saw  at  that  moment  lodged  itself  with  poignant 
sharpness  in  her  brain  and  returned  to  her  mind  long 
afterwards.  So  extreme  was  her  nervous  tension  that 
she  found  it  difficult  to  disentangle  her  thoughts  from 
all  these  outward  impressions. 


708  WOOD  AND   STONE 

The  splash  of  a  water-rat  became  an  episode  in 
her  suspended  revelation.  The  bubbles  rising  from 
the  movements  of  an  eel  in  the  mud  got  mixed  with 
the  image  of  Mrs.  Wotnot  picking  laurel-leaves.  The 
flight  of  a  sea-gull  above  their  heads  was  a  projection 
of  Dangelis'  escape  from  the  spells  of  his  false  mis- 
tress. The  wind  shaking  the  reeds  was  the  breath  of 
her  fatal  news  ruffling  the  man's  smiling  attention. 
The  wail  of  the  startled  plovers  was  the  cry  of  her  own 
heart,  calling  upon  all  the  spirits  of  truth  and  justice, 
to  make  him  believe  her  words. 

She  told  him  at  last,  —  told  him  everything,  walking 
slowly  by  his  side  with  her  eyes  cast  down  and  her 
hands  clasped  tight  behind  her. 

When  she  had  finished,  there  was  an  immense 
intolerable  silence,  and  slowly,  very  slowly,  she 
permitted  her  glance  to  rise  to  her  companion's 
face,  to  grasp  the  effect  of  her  narration  upon 
him. 

How  rare  it  is  that  these  world-shaking  revelations 
produce  the  impression  one  has  anticipated!  To 
Vennie's  complete  amazement,  —  and  even,  it  must 
be  allowed,  a  little  to  her  dismay,  — Dangelis  regarded 
her  with  a  frank  untroubled  smile. 

"You, — I — "  she  stammered,  and  stopped 
abruptly.  Then,  before  he  could  answer  her,  "I 
didn't  know  you  knew  all  this.  Did  you  really  know 
it,  —  and  not  mind?  Don't  people  mind  these  things 
in  —  in  other  countries?" 

Dangelis  spoke  at  last.  "Oh,  yes  of  course,  we 
mind  as  much  as  any  of  you;  that  is  to  say,  if  we 
do  mind,  —  but  you  must  remember,  Miss  Seldom, 
there    are    circumstances,    situations,  —  there    are,    in 


LODMOOR  709 


fact  feelings,  —  which  make  these  things  sometimes 
rather  a  relief  than  otherwise!" 

He  threw  up  his  stick  in  the  air,  as  he  spoke,  and 
caught  it  as  it  descended. 

"Pardon  me,  one  moment,  I  want  —  I  want  to 
see  if  I  can  jump  this  ditch." 

He  threw  both  stick  and  hat  on  the  ground,  and 
to  Venule's  complete  amazement,  stepped  back  a 
pace  or  two,  and  running  desperately  to  the  brink 
of  the  stream  cleared  it  with  a  bound.  He  repeated 
this  manoeuvre  from  the  further  bank,  and  returned, 
breathing  hard  and  fast,  to  the  girl's  side. 

Picking  up  his  hat  and  stick,  he  uttered  a  wild 
series  of  barbaric  howls,  such  howls  as  Vennie  had 
never,  in  her  life,  heard  issuing  from  the  mouth  of 
man  or  beast.  Had  Gladys'  treachery  turned  his 
brain.'' 

But  no  madman  could  possibly  have  smiled  the 
friendly  boyish  smile  with  which  he  greeted  her  when 
this  performance  was  over. 

"So  sorry  if  I  scared  you,"  he  said.  "Do  you 
know  what  that  is?  It's  our  college  'yell.'  It's  what 
we  do  at  base-ball  matches." 

Vennie  thought  he  was  going  to  do  it  again,  and  in 
her  apprehension  she  laid  a  hand  on  his  sleeve. 

"But  don't  you  really  mind  Miss  Romer's  being  like 
this?      Did  you  know  she  was  like  this?'  she  enquired. 

"Don't  let's  think  about  her  any  more,"  cried  the 
artist.  "I  don't  care  what  she's  like,  now  I  can  get 
rid  of  her.  To  tell  you  the  honest  truth.  Miss  Sel- 
dom, I'd  come  down  here  for  no  other  reason  than 
to  think  over  this  curst  hole  I've  got  myself  into, 
and  to  devise  some  way  out. 


710  WOOD   AXD   STONE 

"What  you  tell  me,  —  and  I  believe  every  word  of 
it,  I  want  to  believe  every  word  of  it!  —  just  gives 
me  the  excuse  I  need.  Good-bye,  Miss  Gladys! 
Good-bye,  Ariadne!  'Ban-ban,  Ca-Caliban,  Have  a 
new  master,  get  a  new  man!'  No  more  engagements 
for  me,  dear  Miss  Seldom!  I'm  a  free  lance  now,  a 
free  lance,  —  henceforward  and  forever!" 

The  exultant  artist  was  on  the  point  of  indulging 
once  more  in  his  college  yell,  but  the  scared  and 
bewildered  expression  on  Vennie's  face  saved  her  from 
a  second  experience  of  that  phenomenon. 

"Shall  I  tell  you  what  I  was  thinking  of  doing, 
as  I  strolled  along  the  Front  this  afternoon.'*" 

Vennie  nodded,  unable  to  repress  a  smile  as  she  re- 
membered the  difficulty  she  had  in  arresting  this  stroll. 

"I  was  thinking  of  taking  the  boat  for  the  Channel 
Islands  tomorrow!  I  even  went  so  far  as  to  make 
enquiries  about  the  time  it  started.  What  do  you 
think  of  that?" 

Vennie  thought  it  was  extremely  singular,  and  she 
also  thought  that  she  had  never  heard  the  word 
"enquiries"  pronounced  in  just  that  way. 

"It  leaves  quite  early,  at  nine  in  the  morning.  And 
it's  some  boat,  —  I  can  tell  you  that!" 

"Well,"  continued  Vennie,  recovering  by  degrees 
that  sense  of  concentrated  power  which  had  accom- 
panied her  all  day,  "what  now?  Are  you  still  going 
to  sail  by  it?" 

"That's  —  a  —  large  —  proposition,"  answered  her 
interlocutor  slowly.     "I  —  I  rather  think  I  am!" 

One  effect  of  his  escape  from  his  Nevilton  enchant- 
ress seemed  to  be  an  irrepressible  tendency  to  relapse 
into  the  American  vernacular. 


LODMOOR  711 


They  continued  advancing  along  the  edge  of  the 
ditch,   side  by  side. 

Vennie  plunged  into  the  matter  of  Lacrima  and 
Mr,  Quincunx. 

She  narrated  all  she  knew  of  this  squalid  and  sin- 
ister story.  She  enlarged  upon  the  two  friends'  long 
devotion  to  one  another.  She  pictured  the  wickedness 
and  shame  of  the  projected  marriage  with  John 
Goring.  Finally  she  explained  how  it  had  come  about 
that  both  Mr.  Romer's  slaves,  and  with  them  the 
little  circus-waif,  were  at  that  moment  in  Weymouth. 

"And  so  you've  carried  them  off?"  cried  the  Artist 
in  high  glee.  "Bless  my  soul,  but  I  admire  you  for 
it!    And  what  are  you  going  to  do  with  them  now?" 

Vennie  looked  straight  into  his  eyes.  "That  is 
where  I  want  your  help,  Mr.  Dangelis!" 

It  was  late  in  the  evening  before  the  citizen  of 
Toledo,  Ohio,  and  the  would-be  Postulant  of  the 
Sacred  Heart  parted  from  one  another  opposite  the 
Jubilee  Clock. 

A  reassuring  telegram  had  been  sent  to  Mrs.  Seldom 
announcing  Vennie's  return  in  the  course  of  the  fol- 
lowing day. 

As  for  the  rest,  all  had  been  satisfactorily  arranged. 
The  American  had  displayed  overpowering  generosity. 
He  seemed  anxious  to  do  penance  for  his  obsession 
by  the  daughter,  by  lavishing  benefactions  upon  the 
victims  of  the  father.  Perhaps  it  seemed  to  him  that 
this  was  the  best  manner  of  paying  back  the  debt, 
which  his  aesthetic  imagination  owed  to  the  suggestive 
charms  of  the  Nevilton  landscape. 

He  made  himself,  in  a  word,  completely  responsible 
for   the   three   wanderers.      He  would  carry   them    off 


712  WOOD  AND   STONE 

with  him  to  the  Channel  Isles,  and  either  settle  them 
down  there,  or  make  it  possible  for  them  to  cross 
thence  to  France,  and  from  France,  if  so  they  pleased, 
on  to  Lacrima's  home  in  Italy.  He  would  come  to 
an  arrangement  with  his  bankers  to  have  handed  over 
definitely  to  Mr.  Quincunx  a  sum  that  would  once 
and  for  all  put  him  into  a  position  of  financial 
security. 

"I'd  have  paid  a  hundred  times  as  much  as  that," 
he  laughingly  assured  Vennie,  "to  have  got  clear  of 
my  mix-up  with  that  girl." 

Thus  it  came  about  that  at  nine  o'clock  on  the  day 
which  followed  the  burial  of  James  Andersen,  Vennie, 
standing  on  the  edge  of  the  narrow  wharf,  between 
railway-trucks  and  hawsers,  watched  the  ship  with  the 
red  funnels  carry  off  the  persons  who  —  under  Heaven 
—  were  the  chief  cause  of  the  stone-carver's  death. 

As  the  four  figures,  waving  to  her  over  the  ship's 
side  grew  less  and  less  distinct,  Vennie  felt  an  extra- 
ordinary and  unaccountable  desire  to  burst  into  a  fit 
of  passionate  weeping.  She  could  not  have  told  why 
she  wept,  nor  could  she  have  told  whether  her  tears 
were  tears  of  relief  or  of  desolation,  but  something  in 
the  passing  of  that  brightly-painted  ship  round  the 
corner  of  the  little  break-water,  gave  her  a  different 
emotion  from  any  she  had  ever  known  in  her  life. 

When  at  last  she  turned  her  back  to  the  harbour, 
she  asked  the  way  to  the  nearest  Catholic  Church, 
but  in  place  of  following  the  directions  given  her,  she 
found  herself  seated  on  the  shingles  below  Brunswick 
Terrace,  watching  the  in-drawing  and  out-flowing 
waves. 

How  strange  this  human  existence  was!    Long  after 


LODMOOR  713 


the  last  block  of  Leonian  stone  had  been  removed 
from  its  place  —  long  after  the  stately  pinnacles  of 
Nevilton  House  had  crumbled  into  shapeless  ruins,  — 
long  after  the  memory  of  all  these  people's  troubles 
had  been  erased  and  forgotten,  —  this  same  tide  would 
fling  itself  upon  this  same  beach,  and  its  voice  then 
would  be  as  its  voice  now,  restless,  unsatisfied, 
unappeased. 


CHAPTER   XXIX 

THE  GOAT  AND   BOY 

IT  was  the  middle  of  October.  Francis  Taxater 
and  Luke  Andersen  sat  opposite  one  another 
over  a  beer-stained  table  in  the  parlour  of  the 
Goat  and  Boy.  The  afternoon  was  drawing  to  its 
close  and  the  fire  in  the  little  grate  threw  a  warm 
ruddy  light  through  the  darkening  room. 

Outside  the  rain  was  falling,  heavily,  persistently,  — 
the  sort  of  rain  that  by  long-continued  importunity 
finds  its  way  through  every  sort  of  obstacle.  For 
nearly  a  month  this  rain  had  lasted.  It  had  come  in 
with  the  equinox,  and  Heaven  knew  how  long  it  was 
going  to  stay.  It  had  so  thoroughly  drenched  all 
the  fields,  woods,  lanes,  gardens  and  orchards  of 
Nevilton,  that  a  palpable  atmosphere  of  charnel- 
house  chilliness  pervaded  everything.  Into  this 
atmosphere  the  light  sank  at  night  like  a  thing 
drowned  in  deep  water,  and  into  this  atmosphere  the 
light  rose  at  dawn  like  something  rising  from  beneath 
the  sea. 

The  sun  itself,  as  a  definite  presence,  had  entirely 
disappeared.  It  might  have  fallen  into  fathomless 
space,  for  all  the  visible  signs  it  gave  of  its  existence. 
The  daylight  seemed  a  pallid  entity,  diffused  through 
the  lower  regions  of  the  air,  unconnected  with  any 
visible  fount  of  life  or  warmth. 

The  rain  seemed  to  draw  forth  from  the  earth  all 


THE   GOAT  AND   BOY  715 

the  accumulated  moisture  of  centuries  of  damp 
autumns,  while  between  the  water  below  the  firma- 
ment and  the  water  above  the  firmament,  —  between 
the  persistent  deluge  from  the  sky  and  the  dampness 
exuded  from  the  earth,  —  the  death-stricken  multi- 
tudinous leaves  of  Nevilton  drifted  to  their  morgue 
in  the  cart-ruts  and  ditches. 

The  only  object  in  the  vicinity  whose  appearance 
seemed  to  suffer  no  change  from  this  incursion  of 
many  waters  was  Leo's  Hill.  Leo's  Hill  looked  as 
if  it  loved  the  rain,  and  the  rain  looked  as  if  it  loved 
Leo's  Hill.  In  no  kind  of  manner  were  its  familiar 
outlines  affected,  except  perhaps  in  winning  a  certain 
added  weight,  by  reason  of  the  fact  that  its  rival 
Mount  had  been  stripped  of  its  luxuriant  foliage. 

"So  our  dear  Mr.  Romer  has  got  his  Freight  Bill 
through,"  said  Luke,  sipping  his  glass  of  whiskey 
and  smiling  at  Mr.  Taxater.  "He  at  any  rate  then 
won't  be  worried  by  this  rain." 

"I'm  to  dine  with  him  tomorrow,"  answered  the 
papal  champion,  "so  I  shall  have  an  opportunity  of 
discovering  what  he's  actually  gained  by  this." 

"I  wish  I'd  had  James  cremated,"  muttered  Luke, 
staring  at  the  fire-place,  into  which  the  rain  fell  down 
the  narrow  chimney. 

Mr.  Taxater  crossed  himself. 

"What  do  you  really  feel,"  enquired  the  younger 
man  abruptly,  "about  the  chances  in  favour  of  a  life 
after  death?" 

"The  Church,"  answered  Mr.  Taxater,  stirring  his 
rum  and  sugar  with  a  spoon,  "could  hardly  be 
expected  to  formulate  a  dogma  denying  such  a  hope. 
The  true  spirit  of  her  attitude  towards  it  may  per- 


716  WOOD   AND   STOXE 

haps  be  best  understood  in  the  repetition  of  her 
requiem  prayer,  'Save  us  from  eternal  death!'  We 
none  of  us  want  eternal  death,  my  friend,  though 
many  of  us  are  very  weary  of  this  particular  life.  I 
do  not  know  that  I  am  myself,  however.  But  that 
may  be  due  to  the  fact  that  I  am  a  real  sceptic.  To 
love  life,  Andersen,  one  cannot  be  too  sceptical." 

"Upon  my  soul  I  believe  you!"  answered  the  stone- 
carver,  "but  I  cannot  quite  see  how  you  can  make 
claim  to  that  title." 

"You're  not  a  philosopher  my  friend,"  said  Mr. 
Taxater,  leaning  his  elbows  on  the  table  and  fixing 
a  dark  but  luminous  eye  upon  his  interlocutor. 

"If  you  were  a  philosopher  you  would  know  that 
to  be  a  true  sceptic  it  is  necessary  to  be  a  Catholic. 
You,  for  instance,  aren't  a  sceptic,  and  never  can  be. 
You're  a  dogmatic  materialist.  You  doubt  everything 
in  the  world  except  doubt.     I  doubt  doubt." 

Luke  rose  and  poked  the  fire. 

"I'm  afraid  my  little  Annie'll  be  frightfully  wet," 
he  remarked,  "when  she  gets  home  tonight.  I  wish 
that  last  train  from  Yeoborough  wasn't  quite  so  late." 

"Do  you  propose  to  go  down  to  the  station  to 
meet  her?"  enquired  Mr.  Taxater. 

Luke  sighed.  "I  suppose  so,"  he  said.  "That's  the 
worst  of  being  married.  There's  always  something 
or  other  interfering  with  the  main  purpose  of  life." 

"May  I  ask  what  the  main  purpose  of  life  may  be?" 
said  the  theologian. 

"Talking  with  you,  of  course,"  replied  the  young 
man  smiling;  "talking  with  any  friend.  Oh  damn!  I 
can't  tell  you  how  I  miss  going  up  to  Dead  Man's 
Cottage." 


THE   GOAT  AND   BOY  717 

"Yes,"  said  the  great  scholar  meditatively,  "women 
are  bewitching  creatures,  especially  when  they're  very 
young  or  very  old,  but  they  aren't  exactly  arresting 
in  conversation." 

Luke  became  silent,  meditating  on  this. 

"They  throw  out  little  things  now  and  then,"  he 
said.  "Annie  does.  But  they've  no  sense  of  propor- 
tion. If  they're  happy  they're  thrilled  by  everything, 
and  if  they're  unhappy,  —  well,  you  know  how  it  is ! 
They  don't  bite  at  the  truth,  for  the  sake  of  biting, 
and  they  never  get  to  the  bone.  They  just  lick  the 
gloss  of  things  with  the  tips  of  their  tongues.  And 
they  quiver  and  vibrate  so,  you  never  know  where 
they  are,  or  what  they've  got  up  their  sleeve  that 
tickles  them." 

Mr.  Taxater  lifted  his  glass  to  his  mouth  and  care- 
fully replaced  it  on  the  table.  There  w^as  something 
in  this  movement  of  his  plump  white  fingers  which 
always  fascinated  Luke.  Mr.  Taxater's  hands  looked 
as  though,  beyond  the  pen  and  the  wine-cup,  they  never 
touched  any  earthly  object. 

"Have  you  heard  any  more  of  Philip  Wone?" 
enquired  the  stone-carver. 

The  theologian  shook  his  head.  "I'm  afraid, 
since  he  went  up  to  London,  he's  really  got  entangled 
in  these  anarchist  plots." 

"I'm  not  unselfish  enough  to  be  an  anarchist," 
said  Luke,  "but  I  sympathize  with  their  spirit.  The 
sort  of  people  I  can't  stand  are  these  Christian  Social- 
ists. What  really  pleases  me,  I  suppose,  is  the  notion 
of  a  genuine  aristocracy,  an  aristocracy  as  revolu- 
tionary as  anarchists  in  their  attitude  to  morals  and 
such    things,   an   aristocracy   that's   flung    up   out    of 


718  WOOD  AND  STONE 

this  mad  world,  as  a  sort  of  exquisite  flower  of  chance 
and  accident,  an  aristocracy  that  is  worth  all  this 
damned  confusion!" 

Mr.  Taxater  smiled.  It  always  amused  him  when 
Luke  Andersen  got  excited  in  this  way,  and  began 
catching  his  breath  and  gesticulating.  He  seemed 
to  have  heard  these  remarks  on  other  occasions.  He 
regarded  them  as  a  signal  that  the  stone-carver  had 
drunk  more  whiskey  than  was  good  for  him.  When 
completely  himself  Luke  talked  of  girls  and  of  death. 
When  a  little  depressed  he  abused  either  Noncon- 
formists or  Socialists.  When  in  the  early  stages  of 
intoxication  he  eulogized  the  upper  classes. 

"It's  a  pity,"  said  the  theologian,  "that  Ninsy 
couldn't  bring  herself  to  marry  that  boy.  There's 
something  morbid  in  the  way  she  talks.  I  met  her 
in  Nevil's  Gully  yesterday,  and  I  had  quite  a  long 
conversation  with  her." 

Luke  looked  sharply  at  him.  "Have  you  yourself 
ever  seen  her,  across  there?"  he  asked  making  a 
gesture  in  the  direction  of  the  churchyard. 

Mr.  Taxater  shook  his  head.  "Have  you.?"  he 
demanded. 

Luke  nodded. 

A  sudden  silence  fell  upon  them.  The  rain  beat  in 
redoubled  fury  upon  the  window,  and  they  could 
hear  it  pattering  on  the  roof  and  falling  in  a  heavy 
stream  from  the  pipe  above  the  eaves. 

The  younger  man  felt  as  though  some  tragic  intima- 
tion, uttered  in  a  tongue  completely  beyond  the  reach 
of  both  of  them,  were  beating  about  for  entry,  at 
closed  shutters. 

Mr.  Taxater  felt  no  sensation  of  this  kind.     "  Non 


THE   GOAT  AND   BOY  719 

est  reluctandum  cum  Deo''  were  the  sage  words  with 
which  he  raised  his  glass  to  his  lips. 

Luke  remained  motionless  staring  at  the  window, 
and  thinking  of  a  certain  shrouded  figure,  with  hollow 
cheeks  and  crossed  hands,  to  whom  this  rain  was 
nothing,  and  less  than  nothing. 

Once  more  there  was  silence  between  them,  as 
though  a  flock  of  noiseless  night-birds  were  flying 
over  the  house,  on  their  way  to  the  far-off  sea. 

"How  is  Mrs.  Seldom  getting  on.'^"  enquired  Luke, 
pushing  back  his  chair.  "Is  Vennie  allowed  to  write 
to  her  from  that  place?" 

The  theologian  smiled.  "Oh,  the  dear  lady  is  per- 
fectly happy!  In  fact,  I  think  she's  really  happier 
than  when  she  was  worrying  herself  about  Vennie's 
future." 

"I  don't  like  these  convents,"  remarked  Luke. 

"Few  people  like  them,"  said  the  papal  champion, 
"who  have  never  entered  them. 

"I've  never  seen  an  unhappy  nun.  They  are 
almost  too  happy.  They  are  like  children.  Perhaps 
they're  the  only  persons  in  existence  who  know  what 
continual,  as  opposed  to  spasmodic,  happiness  means. 
The  happiness  of  sanctity  is  a  secret  that  has  to  be 
concealed  from  the  world,  just  as  the  happiness  of 
certain  very  vicious  people  has,  —  for  fear  there 
should  be  no  more  marriages." 

"Talking  of  marriages,"  remarked  Luke,  "I'd  give 
anything  to  know  how  our  friend  Gladys  is  getting 
on  with  Clavering.  I  expect  his  attitude  of  heroic 
pity  has  worn  a  little  thin  by  this  time.  I  wonder 
how  soon  the  more  earthly  side  of  the  shield  will 
wear   thin   too!      But  —  poor   dear   girl!  —  I    do   feel 


720  WOOD   AND   STONE 

sorry  for  her.  Fancy  having  to  listen  to  the  Reverend 
Hugh's  conv^ersation  by  night  and  by  day! 

"I  sent  her  a  picture  post-card,  the  other  after- 
noon, from  Yeoborough  —  a  comic  one.  I  wonder  if 
she  snapped  it  up,  and  hid  it,  before  her  husband 
came  down  to  breakfast!" 

The  jeering  tone  of  the  man  jarred  a  little  on 
Mr.  Taxater's  nerves. 

"I  think  I  understand,"  he  thought  to  himself, 
"why  it  is  that  he  praises  the  aristocracy." 

To  change  the  conversation,  he  reverted  to  Miss 
Seldom's  novitiate. 

"Vennie  was  very  indignant  with  me  for  remaining 
so  long  in  London,  but  I  am  glad  now  that  I  did. 
None  of  our  little  arrangements  —  eh,  my  friend?  — 
would  have  worked  out  so  well  as  her  Napoleonic 
directness.  That  shows  how  wise  It  is  to  stand  aside 
sometimes  and  let  things  take  their  course." 

"Romer  doesn't  stand  aside,"  laughed  Luke.  "I'd 
give  a  year  of  my  life  to  know  what  he  felt  when 
Dangelis  carried  those  people  away!  But  I  suppose 
we  shall  never  know. 

"I  wonder  if  it's  possible  that  there's  any  truth  in 
that  strange  idea  of  Vennie's  that  Leo's  Hill  has  a 
definite  evil  power  over  this  place?  Upon  my  soul 
I'm  almost  inclined  to  wish  it  has!  God,  how  it 
does  rain!" 

He  looked  at  his  watch.  "I  shall  have  to  go  down 
to  the  station  in  a  minute,"  he  remarked. 

One  curious  feature  of  this  conversation  between 
the  two  men  was  that  there  began  to  grow  up  a  deep 
and  vague  irritation  in  Mr.  Taxater's  mind  against 
his  companion.      Luke's  tone  when  he  alluded  to  that 


THE   GOAT  AND   BOY  721 

picture-card  —  "a  comic  one"  —  struck  him  as  touch- 
ing a  depth  of  cynical  inhumanity. 

The  theologian  could  not  help  thinking  of  that  gor- 
geous-coloured image  of  the  wayward  girl,  represented 
as  Ariadne,  which  now  hung  in  the  entrance-hall  of 
her  father's  house.  He  recalled  the  magnificent  pose 
of  the  figure,  and  its  look  of  dreamy  exultation. 
Somehow,  the  idea  of  this  splendid  heathen  creature 
being  the  wife  of  Clavering  struck  his  mind  as  a  re- 
volting incongruity.  For  such  a  superb  being  to  be 
now  stretching  out  hopeless  arms  towards  her  Nevil- 
ton  lover,  —  an  appeal  only  answered  by  comic 
post-cards,  —  struck  his  imagination  as  a  far  bitterer 
commentary  upon  the  perversity  of  the  world  than 
that  disappearance  of  Vennie  into  a  convent  which 
seemed  so  to  shock  Luke. 

He  extended  his  legs  and  fumbled  with  the  gold 
cross  upon  his  watch-chain.  He  seemed  so  clearly 
to  visualize  the  sort  of  look  which  must  now  be 
settling  down  on  that  pseudo-priest's  ascetic  face. 
He  gave  way  to  an  immoral  wish  that  Claver- 
ing might  take  to  drink.  He  felt  as  though  he 
would  sooner  have  seen  Gladys  fallen  to  the  streets 
than  thus  made  the  companion  of  a  monkish 
apostate. 

He  wondered  how  on  earth  it  had  been  managed 
that  Mr.  Romer  had  remained  ignorant  of  the  cause 
of  Dangelis'  flight  and  the  girl's  precipitate  marriage. 
It  was  inconceivable  that  he  should  be  aware  of 
these  things  and  yet  retain  this  imperturbable  young 
man  in  his  employment.  How  craftily  Gladys  must 
have  carried  the  matter  through !  Well,  —  she  was 
no    doubt    paying    the    penalty    of    her    double-dyed 


722  WOOD  AND   STONE 

deceptions  now.  The  theologian  experienced  a  sick 
disgust  with  the  whole  business. 

The  rain  increased  in  violence.  It  seemed  as  though 
the  room  where  they  sat  was  isolated  from  the  whole 
world  by  a  flood  of  down-pouring  waves.  The  gods 
of  the  immense  Spaces  were  weeping,  and  man,  in  his 
petty  preoccupation,  could  only  mutter  and  stare. 

Luke  rose  to  his  feet.  "To  Romer  and  his  Stone- 
Works,"  he  cried,  emptying  his  glass  at  one  gulp 
down  his  throat,  "and  may  he  make  me  their 
Manager!" 

Mr.  Taxater  also  rose.  "To  the  tears  that  wash 
away  all  these  things,"  he  said,  "and  the  Necessity 
that  was  before  them  and  will  be  after  them." 

They  went  out  of  the  house  together,  and  the 
silence  that  fell  between  them  was  like  the  silence 
at  the  bottom  of  deep  waters. 


THE    END 


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